Kate Petley’s image-making process is guided by a will to transform. She constructs abstract paintings by first creating dramatically lit sculptural arrangements that are photographed, printed, and selectively painted. The overall flatness of the images contravenes their holographic appearance.  

Petley has been awarded a 2025 Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant. She has been featured in thirty solo exhibitions and is represented by VonLintel Gallery in Los Angeles, Robischon Gallery in Denver, and Manneken Press in Bloomington, Illinois.  Her work has been featured in publications such as Artforum’s Must See, Lenscratch, L’Oeil de la Photographie,  and the Houston Chronicle. 

She has participated in solo and group exhibitions at the MCA Denver, FotoFest Houston, Museum of South Texas, Grinnell College Museum of Art, Museum of the Southwest, the Arlington Museum of Art, and the Martin Museum at Baylor University. Petley has been Guest Curator at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (BMOCA) in 2021 and returns in 2026 to curate another museum-wide exhibition.

Petley participated in PhotoIreland 2017 in Dublin and is a Ucross Foundation fellowship recipient. In 1990, she was awarded an NEA Rockefeller Foundation grant in support of a photographic installation exhibited at Diverseworks Houston.

Petley received a BFA cum laude from the University of Utah in 1976 in Sculpture and Ceramics. She lives and works in Peekskill, New York.