About Kathleen Rietz

I consider myself a lifelong artist because I was drawing, playing with clay and painting before I could even write my name. I preferred exploring prairies and streams, drawing, writing short stories and painting over playing with dolls or tea parties. My mother was artistic, and nurtured my love for art, introducing me to paper machè, clay, paint-by-numbers and watercolors. I fondly recall many trips together to the Art Institute of Chicago. One of my most memorable Christmas gifts from my mother was a calendar of French Impressionists paintings and a red wool beret like the one depicted in the Renoir painting "Two Sisters on the Terrace". I still have the beret more than 40 years later, and was wearing it when my husband proposed to me in front of that same painting in 2023. When I was 14 years old, my parents bought me my first canvas and set of acrylic paints. I won awards for my art in high school competitions, and placed as a runner up for a scholarship to the American Academy of Art in Chicago where I attended school. I went on to a freelance career in commercial art, spanning more than 3 decades, taught and created fine art on the side. My drive to create stems from a curiosity about art, art history, mediums and experimentation. I am driven by a limitless love for color, design, shape and form, and enjoy constantly pushing forward in my art practice to see where I can take my art next. I delight in watching my ideas come alive on canvas. Because I work fairly quickly to get my ideas on canvas before inspiration fades or changes, II prefer to work with acrylic paints and mediums, handmade collage papers, crayon and gold leaf. Although I sometimes work on small canvases (12" x 12" for example), I prefer to work on medium sized canvases that are between 24" x 24" to 30" x 40". I would love to work larger than this, but my current studio is small and these sizes are comfortable to work on based on my workspace. I do take on larger commissions at times. My largest measured 48" x 60". Someday I hope to experiment with larger surfaces. Although my art has sold around the globe via social media and galleries, at this point in my career I desire to reach a broader, new audience through Artfinder.