Kristie Bretzke received her BFA degree from the University of Minnesota where she studied studio art and art history.
Bretzke’s work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including shows at Winfield Gallery in Carmel, California and the Kaiping Art Museum in Kaiping, China. She has been an artist-in-residence at the Centre D’Art (2012), in Marnaysur-Seine, France; Palazzo Rinaldi (2012), in Noepoli, Italy; and the Kunstlerhaus (2010), in Salzburg, Austria. Bretzke is an artist-member of the Traffic Zone Center for Visual Art, a prominent artist cooperative located in the historic Warehouse District of downtown Minneapolis, where she maintained her painting studio until 2025. Her current studio space is located in the Kickernick building in Minneapolis. She also serves on the committee for Art 4 Shelter.
Artist Statement – “Costa Rica” 2026:
These small paintings grew out of a recent trip to Montezuma, Costa Rica, where I traveled with two fellow artists. For one week I immersed myself in the daily life of this place—its steep jungled hillsides, lively village, modest cabinas, and its magnificent, ever-changing shoreline. The works in this exhibition at Groveland Gallery reflect the subjects that captivated me most. Everything I painted was just a short walk from where I stayed.
The series includes three evening seascapes, each an attempt to capture a coastline that shifted dramatically from rocky stretches with pounding surf to calm, sandy beaches. I also painted the cabina where I slept and worked—a simple tented structure that became my temporary studio. Nearby, a brightly painted beach house held my attention with its saturated color and the clutter of everyday living, as did a vintage
gum-ball machine at the entrance to the village market.
Working in Costa Rica challenged me to find my voice within the high-contrast tropical light and sometimes garish colors. As a painter accustomed to the muted palette of Minnesota, I gravitated toward daytime shade and evening light, which felt more in harmony with my own aesthetic.