(Kate’s new book, Art From Your Core: A Holistic Guide to Visual Voice is now available!)

"It was almost as if she were looking into the future, that she has some strange clairvoyant talent for sensing that her art would come to reflect the times we live in, the times recorded on the nightly news, the times that compose the strange reality we have come to accept as passing for normal... She was able to see patterns where others did not. She was acting, in the words of the late, great novelist Kurt Vonnegut, “as a canary in a poison coal mine,” detecting danger before others realized the poison even existed… The exhibit is not for the faint of heart. It contains some graphic depictions of nudity and images with the kind of power that leaves marks. It's brilliant and provocative."
- Mike Argento, York Daily Record

“Kate Kretz creates a poetic space in which tenderness and fear can confront one another. It is an absolute dedication to the threat of uncertainty through handiwork, and achieves the consistency of an art that protects life itself."
- Adriana Herrera, EL NUEVO HERALD

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

“Kate Kretz walks around with no skin on. Every lick of mayhem in the collective psyche passes through her synapses, whether she is drawing the egregious sneers of Trump, painting rapists' body hair, or eulogizing beloved lamb chops. The exhibition assaults viewers with a meticulous polemic against violent hierarchy, exorcising all of testosterone's demons at once.” - Stephanie Lee Jackson, Delicious Line

"The greatness of America is a sham seemingly invulnerable to truth. But Kate Kretz is trying, and she will keep on trying, to expose it through #bullyculture, a monumental mixed media series she began thinking about in 2011 that shows no signs of stopping. If only it could. The series currently includes KKK hoods and face masks made from deconstructed MAGA hats; a monumental painting of a half-naked oligarch gripping his penis amidst the splendor of tacky destruction; photorealistic images of sports fans, corporate raiders, and rape burned into tree slices; and a bullet hole through glass, embroidered on black cotton using gray hairs donated by people who have suffered profound loss. Kretz was scheduled to exhibit the series at Jen Tough Gallery in Santa Fe this month, but the gallery has lost its brick and mortar space in the coronavirus fallout. The irony is that, as the world continues to fall to pieces, Kretz’s unapologetically critical and direct art feels all the more necessary. Empty shop windows, anyone? This is what ought to be on display, to help ensure that what has long since passed for greatness will never be allowed to do so again."
- Lori Waxman, 60 WRD/MIN Art Critic

“Few acts of sexual and romantic love are as oppressive and shocking as Kretz's triumphantly perverse sewn tributes to maternal overinvestment. ”
- Felicia Feaster, ArtscriticATL.com

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

"Kretz is in a category by herself."
- Michael O'Sullivan, WASHINGTON POST

“A reverence, a quiet bubble of awe, is experienced upon viewing her work."
- Tamsen Ellen, HAIR IS FOR PULLING

“Kate Kretz's needle art is amazing. And I mean that literally. When I look at her work, my mouth falls open and I go into a kind of trance, enthralled by her concepts and captivated by her exquisite technique." - Denise Felton, CRAFTGOSSIP.COM

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

“Kate Kretz... known for labor-intensive art of intellectual heft.”
- Candice Russell, CITY LINK, Miami

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

"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

"The situations depicted behind Kretz’s work can be hard to visually digest, with narratives at times so intense they threaten to dominate our ability to take in the subtle detailing.  Yet those subtle details, somewhat obsessed over by the artist, are what imbue the works with their visual power.  The power of her obsession manifests in unique ways across mediums."
- Eric Hope, East City Art

“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

"Embroidery, in the hands of an artist like Kate, is a tool conveying both weight and fragility. The thousands of fine stitches, feather-light, come together to create an image that seems ineradicable as a rock, and that weighs just as heavily on the viewer’s heart."
- Fiberart International Blog

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

Complete reviews and downloadable catalogs are on the Reviews page.