Faculty

Rae Bates is Hamilton Studio School's founder.  

The third generation in her family to work in the visual arts, Rae has over 25 years of teaching experience working with students of all ages in a range of settings including Sheridan College's Illustration Program, The Dundas Valley School of Art, and a home school.  

Rae is a two-time recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant.  She holds an Hons. B.A. in Comparative Literature from McMaster University and a M.A. in Communication Studies from McGill University.  

She works as a painter, illustrator, writer and researcher in her home studio in Hamilton, Ontario.

Locally, she is best known as the illustrator of Paislee and the Talking Tree.

Artist and educator, Katherine MacDonald has been contributing to the arts in our community for over 40 years. Described by students as nurturing and deeply knowledgeable, she credits her successful teaching career to her active artistic practice.

An insightful and original painter, her body of work, collected at home and internationally, is an ongoing exploration of friendship, human relationship, and the tension between tradition and the unique social framework that art inhabits today.

MacDonald taught at Sheridan College’s Illustration Program for over 25 years, and at DVSA for over four decades. 

She paints in her home studio in Hamilton, Ontario, exhibits regularly, and undertakes commissions as a curator and public speaker.