Kate Van Doren is a member of the Beautiful Bizarre Artist Directory
Kate Van Doren (American, b.1978) explores human resiliency, connection, and the healing power of nature through realism paintings, drawings, and photography.
Having worked as an art therapist in the mental health field for more than two decades, Kate offers a unique lens, cultivating connections with her inspirations to foster their stories about the human condition. She is deeply devoted to creating art that raises healing awareness in the lives of others.
After receiving an honors degree in Fine Art and Psychology from the University of Oregon (2002), Kate earned a double masters in Counseling and Art Therapy at Marylhurst University (2006). As a board-certified art therapist she has developed and administered art therapy programs for homeless at-risk youth, persons with severe and persistent mental illness, trauma survivors, the elderly, and hospice care. She provides art therapy and art mentorships to artists and art therapy students around the world.
She is the creator of the Healing Words Project, a photography and painting safe space workshop for women. The Project comprises stories and photos of over 2,ooo women recognizing their healing journeys. Healing Words Project has been recognized in multiple international publications, including Newsweek Español as an early intervention program to prevent violence against women.
Kate’s Paintings, drawings and photographs are exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the U.S. and Mexico, and have been acquired by private collections internationally. She has been featured in Fine Art Connoisseur, American Art Collector, and PoetsArtists, Mod Portrait and the Art Renewal Center among other publications. In 2022 she was an ARC and Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize Finalist.
She also earned 2nd Place in the international FIKVA award for Painters. Her work was selected for inclusion in the Peregrine Collection, a time capsule of digitized works of art and literature sent to the moon. Kate is based in San Miguel de Allende, México, where she devotes her time to her family, her art therapy practice, activism work, and her fine art studio.
Kate Van Doren is best known for creating representational photo realistic imagery conveying the strength and vulnerability intrinsic to the human condition, integrating the healing capacity of nature. Kate’s body of work examines the elements of mental health and human rights through the power of positive words. Her current series is based on the Healing Words Project focusing on women’s empowering stories through their own words to raise awareness about gender based violence, healing and self reclamation.
The Healing Words Project is a global collective comprised of photographs and paintings of over 2,000 women’s stories about healing and empowerment. For the therapeutic project, women choose personal mantras about the strength of all women, which are then written on their bodies and photographed. Paintings from the Healing Words Project are created using the reference photos combined with elements of the participants’ life stories.
