Kate Petley

Kate Petley is a multimedia artist working at the intersection of photography, painting, and sculpture. Her work emphasizes psychologically charged space, using common materials like cardboard in a transformative process.

Sculptures made of castaway materials are placed within intensely lit environments and photographed, with texture and pattern amplified to mythic proportions as the image is transferred to canvas. Selected areas are hand painted, increasing the slippage between mediums. A sense of contamination lingers from the blurring of photography and painting, fused together in a shifting relationship made possible by technology. Perception is jerked back and forth as the viewer resolves these physical differences. By presenting new interpretations of a luminous surface, references that include the ever-present backlit computer screen are broadly inserted.

Petley had solo exhibitions in 2020 at Robischon Gallery in Denver and VonLintel Gallery in Los Angeles. She will present a solo exhibition at the University of Colorado Art Museum (CUAM), opening Fall 2021. Petley is the Guest Curator for a nine-artist exhibition at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, opening June 2021 and titled ‘The Stubborn Influence of Painting.’

Her work has been exhibited at MCA Denver, the Museum of South Texas, the Nicolaysen Museum, Fotofest Houston, the Martin Museum at Baylor University, Museum of the Southwest, the Arlington Museum of Art, and other institutions.  Petley has been featured in twenty-seven solo exhibitions and has completed numerous public commissions and installations. She participated in PhotoIreland 2017 and is a Ucross Foundation Fellowship recipient. Awarded an NEA Rockefeller Foundation Grant, other residencies include the Mayer of Munich Architectural Art Glass studio in Germany and Platteforum Denver.

Collections include the Museum of Texas Tech University, the City of Houston, Fidelity Investments Boston and Denver, Stanford University, Morgan Stanley San Francisco, the Federal Reserve Bank Kansas City, and the Polsinelli Collection.

Born in New York, Kate lives and works near Boulder, Colorado.