All works on this site are
copyright © Kate Kretz.

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NEWS

Kate was recently awarded a 2008 North Carolina Arts Council Fellowship ($10,000).

The New York Times mentions Kate's work in their review of "Pricked: Extreme Embroidery". Time Out New York chooses the exhibition as one of "The Best of 2007".

Many new reviews, catalogs, and interviews are available for downloading on the Reviews page. "Grace & Shame" catalogs may be purchased from the Frost Museum here.

Kate's exhibition at the Belger Art Center, "Undressed", was pick of the week on the Brooklyn Museum's Feminist Art Blog.

Kate's hair embroideries will be featured in a new foundations textbook to be published this year.

Kate's painting, "Blessed Art Thou", was exhibited at the Art Miami Fair, January 5-8, 2007. The painting was covered by over 130 news sources, including ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, Fox, The International Herald Tribune, and the New York Times. Complete list of press coverage for the painting is here.

Detailed images of Blessed Art Thou.

Downloadable PDF of January 14th, 2007, "Blessed Art Thou" press release.

Kate is currently working in her studio full-time in NC, giving lectures & critiques as a visiting artist at various universities. She is represented in the state of Florida by Chelsea Galleria, located in Miami. Her work can also be seen at Packer/Schopf Gallery in Chicago.

RECENT/UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS

"Pricked: Extreme Embroidery", group exhibition
Museum of Arts & Design, New York
Nov 2007 - Apr 27, 2008

"The Heart is a Lonely Hunter", group exhibition
31GRAND Gallery, New York
Jan 10 - Feb 9, 2008

"Hand To Hand: 100 Artists Comment on the Iraq War"
Spruill Gallery, Atlanta, GA
March 7 - April 26, 2008

"Hand To Hand: Artists Witness the War"
Carol Henry Studio Gallery, Agoura Hills, CA
July 3 - Aug 1, 2008

"Political Circus"
Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL
Sept 5- Nov 2008

group show
Spencertown Academy, Spencertown, NY
Oct 11 - Nov 23, 2008

"Women's Wear"
Eastern Michigan University Gallery, Ypsilanti, MI
Feb 17 - Mar 26, 2009

SELECTED CRITICAL REVIEWS

"With a bluntly primal wit, Kretz claws at the guts......"
- Carlos Suarez De Jesus, MIAMI NEW TIMES

“Kate Kretz’s paintings are explorations of identity in various states of extremity, symbolized by the often dramatic or downright lurid effects of light (These effects, incidentally, are what distinguish Kretz as an exceptionally promising younger artist.)”
- Jerry Cullum, ART PAPERS

“Lush and luminous, paintings by Kate Kretz speak of dreamy nighttime worlds alive with possibilities and portents. “Beauty Wrest” is her show of painstakingly, immaculately crafted oil paintings....”
- Elisa Turner, MIAMI HERALD

“Powerfully resonant and enticingly complex, Kretz’s paintings are crafted - one might almost say wrought - with an exquisite detail that draws the viewer in, unfolding before the viewer’s gaze, and only with an investment of time and effort....”
- Nora Heimann, PhD, Catholic University, Beauty Wrest catalog

"The paintings of Kate Kretz.... have the power to stop people in their tracks."
- Candice Russell, CITYLINK

"Kretz’s work is decidedly literary... everything plays against other elements and viewer expectation and experience to create stories capable of penetrating the television-addled consciousness of contemporary viewers.”
- Neil Herring, ART PAPERS

"It's unusual in this TV/Internet/YouTube age for a painting to captivate the nation, but that's exactly what Kate Kretz did with her piece, 'Blessed Art Thou'... "
- Adam Bernard, FOAM Magazine

“Kate Kretz embroiders pillowcases with eyelashes and human hair... the result is both delicate and creepy... ”
- Karen Rosenberg, NEW YORK TIMES

“With the skill of a Caravaggio and the mindset of a Gloria Steinem, Kate Kretz paints disturbing images of the emotional life of women.....”
- Verna Safran, thl.yourvillage.com

“Edgy, seductive, work of a most unusual artist.....miraculous beauty.... How typically clever of the artist to take a conventional genre and turn it upside down. But then there is cleverness throughout this welcome exhibition.”
- Candice Russell, CITY LINK

"Kre(n)tz traffics in the unspoken and unacknowledged, even the private thoughts that can be our own undoing..."
- Cate McQuaid, THE BOSTON GLOBE

“The erie glow that emanates from so many of the canvases...is a result of being raised ‘on a regimen of Catholicism and Technicolor movies.’ It’s an odd but apt convergence of influences, with the conflicting impulses of the Vatican and Hollywood coming together to create the emotional turbulence and instability that always seem to lurk just below the deceptively calm surfaces of Kretz’s images.”
- Michael Mills, NEW TIMES MIAMI

“Tableaux as portentous as ones assembled by David Lynch; details of light and shadow combined with dramatic elements of color and composition...”
- Jerry Cullum, ART PAPERS

"Kate Kretz...wowing viewers in a variety of media, from oil on canvas to sculpted bas-relief encaustic to embroidery. Her obsessive, detail-oriented images pull us into their magnetic orbit."
- "Best Bets", NEWS & OBSERVER

"Kate Kretz's paintings are amazing. Realistic and phantasmagoric, she details every inch of the canvas with ardent descriptions of past and present. Her palette is spectoral and the images she paints in both oils and acrylics show her mastery of the craft."
- Margurite Gil, MIAMI SUNPOST

"Kate Kretz's solo exhibition was another display of her impressive work... her work in two & three dimensions is highly taut with emotion that is complex and sensitive."
- Onajide Shabaka, MIAMI ART EXCHANGE

“Kretz’s stories of love and loss, resignation and self reliance are richly portrayed in deep blue night skies, the intense color and detailed pattern of her fabrics, and the complex lives of her characters.”
- Glen Harper, ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION

"These astonishing "pillow drawings" are as affecting for their execution as for the way they unblatently describe a psychological maelstrom."
- Elise Turner, MIAMI HERALD

Complete reviews and downloadable catalogs are on the Reviews page.

ARTIST STATEMENT
I was raised on a visual regimen of Catholicism and Technicolor films. This rich, lurid vocabulary, full of resplendent light, is used as a seductive device to pose questions about the more complex or convoluted aspects of the world surrounding me. I am interested in issues of class, power, manipulation, and internally coherent systems of illusion, whether occurring on a personal or global scale.

I create across media boundaries, in materials deemed most suitable to the content, often worked to the point of obsessiveness.