Kate Kretz with Gunlicker I (2015), Oil and acrylic on Gatorboard, 20 x 16 inches in “Deadlocked and Loaded”. Kate Kretz is an exquisite painter and I’m absolutely mesmerized by her paintings, they are so real as to jump off the canvas/gatorboard. It’s interesting how they make some people uncomfortable, I love them and they make me laugh. I get pulled in examining all the fine details like the veins in the hand or the neatly trimmed stubble on the guy’s face. Kate is brave, with this and other series of works, she does not shy away from difficult subjects, be at the “Hate Hat” series on the racism of ex-president Trump or with this series on the fetishization of guns in our culture and toxic masculinity. I admire the amount of thought, time and research she puts into her work before even picking up a paintbrush.
Kretz says, “Perpetual Platitudes for Endless Innocents and Gunlicker are part of an expansive ongoing series, #bullyculture. Although the U.S. has painted a false narrative of nobility over the years, we’ve been a bully culture since our inception. I employ what bell hooks calls “the oppositional gaze” to call out the aggressors, intimidators, and often overlooked larger, systemic forces (some seemingly innocuous) that encourage and reinforce this poison in our culture. The series involved extensive research into racism, misogyny, homophobia, gun worship and animal rights, revealing many overlaps when it comes to problems we traditionally address as separate issues. Machines designed to kill as many people as possible in the shortest period of time (as opposed to hunting rifles or self-defense guns) have no place in a civilized society. The fetishization of these objects and their brandishing as weapons of intimidation is an integral part of “#bullyculture”.”
Kate Kretz earned a Cours De La Civilisation Française certificate at The Sorbonne, a BFA at SUNY Binghamton (SUNY Foundation Award for Excellence in Fine Arts, Harpur College Departmental Honors/Art, Harpur College Academic Honors), & an MFA at the University of Georgia. Exhibitions include the Museum of Arts & Design, Van Gijn Museum, Kunstraum Kreuzberg, Wignall Museum, Katonah Museum, Frost Museum, Racine Museum, Fort Collins MOCA, San Jose Museum of Textiles, Telfair Museum, Fort Lauderdale Museum, & Tsinghua University.
Kretz’s work has appeared in over 95 international newspapers and has been featured repeatedly in the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Miami Herald, The Huffington Post, The Atlanta Journal/Constitution, ArtPapers, and Surface Design. She’s received three MD Arts Council grants (in both Crafts and Painting), NC Arts Council Grant, South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship, Florida Visual Arts Fellowship, and a Millay Colony Residency. She received the SECAC award for Outstanding Artistic Achievement, she’s a James Renwick Alliance’s 2020 Distinguished Artist and is on the Fulbright Specialist Roster.
She was an Associate Professor/BFA Director at Florida International University for ten years before joining Montgomery College, where she was recently awarded a Shoenberg Fellowship to complete her first book on finding visual voice. Kretz writes for Medium, and Hyperallergic’s “Drawing In A Time Of Fear & Lies” series.
Learn more at KateKretz.com and @katekretzartist
