Meet Kate.

I was so excited to meet Kate, I had fallen in love with her whimsical art at the local arts markets. Her work brings so much light into my life, as you read her feature, you’ll see some of her pieces. She is a kind soul and truly humble about her talents. She is as delightful as her artwork. In the short time we shared I learned that she is generous, a seeker of knowledge, and open to challenges.

She was raised in a [small town] where she spent countless hours on the family farm. From a young age she had a love for drawing, particularly men with mullets wearing cowboy hats. The cowboy fascination lasted until she was introduced by a basic drawing lesson on how to draw Snoopy. From then on she drew this character, at least, 1,000 times, until branching out to Garfield and other familiar faces in the Sunday Funnies. It wasn’t until she reached her 20s that her own characters and style started to develop. Highly influenced by funny words and conversations, number patterns, old photographs, mid century design and repetition. Over the last ten years her style has morphed and changed with life events. She has been featured in art shows at the University of Utah, Sugar Space Art Gallery, Rose Wagner Center for the Arts, Kilby Court and Salt Lake City Gallery Stroll. She recently designed t-shirts for The Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah and Salt Lake Bicycle Company. When she is not making art she enjoys camping, eating bananas and peanut butter, tending to her large collection of house plants and adding to her bright sneaker collection.

To browse more of her work, go to her facebook page and then watch this video filmmaker Steve Olpin made about her. Also, if you want to purchase any of her work, here is a link to her Etsy shop (she also does commission based projects.)

Your art is so whimsical; tell us about your creative process, inspirations, etc.
I’m kind of chaotic with my process. An idea either starts on a sticky note at work, or while lying awake at night. I have lots of sketch books but, I seem to always sketch on odd scraps of paper instead. I use several different mediums so a lot of times I try to decide how invested I am in the idea before I will turn it into a painting. I usually have at least ten different pieces I’m working on at a time. I draw a lot of inspiration from reading and researching about different events, time periods, and artists that I love, and it all inspires me. I love looking at other peoples work and their process.

If you could have one artist (living or dead) paint a mural for you, who would it be, and what would it be of?
It’s a toss-up. I would either choose Charley Harper or Margaret Kilgallen. Both of those folks have equally dreamy art. I wouldn’t choose what type of mural they create. I would rather let them create whatever they want; it would be fun to have the surprise at the end.

If you could change one thing about the world today, what would that one thing be?
If I could change one thing about the world it would be the 40+ hour work week we have. I think that we spend so much time working that we often don’t have time to spend doing the things we love, with the people who matter most to us. I have been thinking about it a lot lately and find it to be pretty crazy that the majority of my day is spent with people I would otherwise not choose to spend time with. Maybe I should move to the Netherlands where their standard work week is four days, and around 29 hours.

If money weren’t a factor, what is one thing you would do the next chance you had?
If money weren’t a factor, I’d buy a scamp trailer and hit up every national park in the US and Canada. If you haven’t been to Waterton National Park in Canada, you should go!

How do you find happiness in each day?
It’s taken me many years to figure out how to find happiness every day. I think happiness is so different for everyone, and some people may look for it their whole lives. For me finding pleasure in simple things, like a good cup of tea, or an extra 20 minutes to take a nap, is happiness. For a long time I thought happiness came from success and monetary things, but the older I get the more I realize that things don’t create happiness for us, we do.

What does it mean to truly love someone?
To truly love someone is to let go of expectations and accept people as they are in their current state.