About the ARTIST

“My inspiration comes from my fascination with the rhythms created by the variety of patterns and textures in nature:  flowers, leaves, clouds, the ocean ... and birds!  The pandemic allowed me the space to observe more closely the birds who share our world. I call my bird images ‘portraits’ because I’m hoping to provide the viewer a more intimate and deeper connection to these magnificent animals.” 

Kate Roberts — aka The Wired Woman — is a Santa Cruz–based artist who’s been mixing media and meaning since long before Instagram told you how. She won her first photography award at 15, which was both encouraging and wildly inconvenient, since it set her on a lifelong path of chasing light, texture, and the perfect frame.

Her work has been featured in solo and group shows, and lives in private and corporate collections (aka places with really good walls). After years behind the lens, Kate couldn’t resist picking up a paintbrush — and now creates bold, layered pieces by painting directly onto her photographs with acrylics. Think: nature, reimagined, with extra dimension and a whole lot of color.

Her most recent detour (because why stand still?) moves beyond photography entirely — inspired by her deep admiration for traditional Aboriginal art, and modern masters like O’Keeffe, Rothko, and Mondrian. The results are abstract, vibrant, and unapologetically hers.

Kate spent decades in Silicon Valley doing the whole high-stakes leadership thing — sales, strategy, partnerships, corporate philanthropy. After that, she ran her own consulting firm. Then she was recruited to lead a regional nonprofit, where she gave it one last whirl before retiring again — this time to spend precious time with her husband of 32 years, who was dying of cancer.  After he passed, everything changed. Grief rewrote her priorities, and her sense of who she wanted to be in this next chapter. She processed her grief by throwing herself into her art which she has found to be  extraordinarily cathartic.