Kate Neckel (b. 1976) is an artist and musician based in New York. Her work moves on instinct and experimentation, following a line wherever it wants to go, trusting curiosity over correction, and letting a mark stay alive rather than smoothing it into something safer.
As a singer-songwriter and producer, she writes, plays, produces, and records everything herself, in single takes, from her apartment studio - seven solo singles to date, released on her own label, Bird Star Three. The sound is intimate and atmospheric, spare and a little raw, carrying the same immediacy that drives her painting into sound.
Her distinctive style has made her a sought-after collaborator across fashion, design, hospitality, and music. She designed Zac Posen's first logo, and her commissions and collaborations include Cole Haan, Ace Hotel, Marriott Bonvoy, Seattle Seahawks, Sotheby's Home, Brooklyn Grange, Wildair, and a namesake collection for Bassetti. She has also collaborated with Pearl Jam's Mike McCready on Infinite Color & Sound, a project of exhibitions, performances, and limited-edition records with Jack White's Third Man Records. Her work across art and music has been profiled in EqualizeHer's Powerhouse Stories, Linda Perry's initiative for women in music.
Early in her career she worked as David Byrne's art assistant on his book The New Sins and his album Look into the Eyeball, and co-curated Scratch (2003) at the Chelsea Art Museum, a group show whose artists included Dustin Yellin. She is the author of Start Now! The Creativity Journal (Chronicle Books, 2015), and holds MFAs from the School of Visual Arts and the Maryland Institute College of Art (Mt. Royal School). She lives and works in New York.
"There's a simplicity to Kate Neckel's giant abstract paintings that's almost off-putting… these works seem to hint at some kind of ineffable message, like a pictogram vignetted, leaving us breathlessly hanging." -Amanda Manitach, CityArts
"Kate's a really good guitar player, and she didn't know it, and then in that not knowing, she's created a new way of playing which is always the coolest way to do music. The experimentation." - Mike McCready, Pearl Jam
"Lines of black and blue river over white. These are mazes, symbols, maps -abstract yet clearly declared." -Seattle Met