Born and raised in Chicago, U.S.A., Kretchmer studied art at the College of Fine and Applied Arts at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), where she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts. She moved to Germany in 2010 and currently lives in Berlin. Kretchmer's paintings depict colourful figures juxtaposed with domestic objects placed against bold, painterly colour fields which overlay and interact with each other in unexpected ways. The line between representational and abstract is blurred; laws of nature and physics are stretched, and absurdity is embraced. This, together with the use of intense lights and darks, conjures up a surreal spatial depth, evoking mystery and whimsy.