Kate Oltmann is a contemporary Western artist whose work blends storytelling, history, and bold visual language with the quiet power of domestic craft. Based in Montana, she paints iconic figures of the American West—cowboys, farmhands, outlaws, and boxers—set against vivid quilt patterns that evoke memory, legacy, and care. Each painting hums with tension and tenderness, asking what it means to be tough, and what it means to be home.
A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design (MFA) and Sonoma State University (BFA), Oltmann has exhibited her work nationally in galleries, museums, and fairs including The Russell at the C.M. Russell Museum, Coors Western Art (Young Guns), Art Basel Miami, Grants Pass Arts Museum and Yellowstone Art Museum. She was selected for WESTAF’s 50 Years, 50 Artists, and her work was recently featured in 100 Emerging Artists of 2024 (Women’s Edition).
Her paintings live in private, public, and institutional collections such as the RISD Museum, Merck & Co., and Kennesaw State University. She has held residencies at Vermont Studio Center, Chalk Hill, and InCahoots, and has been recognized with honors including Best in Show, multiple artist grants, and gallery representation invitations.
Oltmann lives and works on her family farm in northwest Montana, raising two young children and finding inspiration in the layered rhythms of domestic life. Her work continues to bridge the visual language of the past with the emotional truths of the present, stitching together new narratives of the American West—one pattern, one portrait, one bold brushstroke at a time.
