Catherine Palmer

What is your professional name? Where were you born and does that place still influence you? Where do you live now and how does that place influence you? Do you have family, friends, or fellow artists who support you in your work, life and art-making and how do they make a difference in your life?

My professional name is Catherine Palmer. I was born in Jacksonville, Florida and it does not influence me all the time. I do like to make beach and animal life art. I mainly grew up in Waxhaw, North Carolina, and that area is what a lot of my work is based off of. All my friends and fellow artist are very supportive. They always give me the confidence to be as creative as I wish to be. My friends also love to help give me ideas if I am stuck on something, and I am very appreciative of that. My family is supportive but I can tell that certain things that I do they don’t really understand. They have a hard time understanding art, but they are learning.

When and how did you start making art? Can you describe the time when you first realized that creating was something you absolutely had to do? Why do you make art now? How has your work changed or developed over time?

T o me when I was first making art it was in high school. I took an art class because it was mandatory and I actually found it a lot of fun. I always like photography since middle school but never tried drawing or painting. In high school I took every possible art class there was and I grew to love it, but my favorite was my digital classes. I took two photography classes and I learned Adobe programs and then I took a media class and learned even more about digital art and design. My work has definitely changed over the years and had a very cartoon feel to it. Over the years I worked at it and now I do not really know what it is because I do a little bit of everything and I do not have a set style anymore. I just make what I want, how I want.

Do you have any creative patterns, routines or rituals associated with your artmaking? What is your most important artist tool(s) and why? How do you know when a work is finished? What new creative medium would you love to pursue?

Normally I don’t have a constant routine that I follow when making art. I like to dip my toes into a little bit of everything and experiment with many forms of media so I know what they are and I can hopefully use them in the future.

My most important artist tool is my iPad. I use it to brainstorm and it carries all my ideas and sketches as well as my favorite programs to use while making digital works. I will never know when my work is finished, I have a thing that I like to call ‘a too much genie’. I will add and add and then sometimes it’s too late to go back and I have to deal with what I have and learn. Recently with creative media, I have been into making watercolor and/or marker drawings and scanning them into Photoshop and working on them. So I have really gotten into mixed media with physical and digital media.

What's the first artwork you ever sold? Do you make a living from your art?

The first type of artwork that I sold was in high school. I would make wearable art that goes on your head. I stopped making them after I came to college due to lack of time and storage space.

Do I make a living off my art? As of right now no, I do not. It is more of, if someone wants to buy I might sell it to them, but that does depend on the work as well.

What are your goals for the future, for both work and life? What interesting project are you working on at the moment?

In the future, my long term goal is to have a stable job. But my dream would be to have a traveling job. Of course for the future I would love to have a family and when I have one I would lower my traveling intentions. Projects that I am working on right now are making designs for merchandise for a blog down in Florida.

What or who inspires you? Do you have a favorite – or influential – living artist? What work of art do you wish you owned and why?

Pop culture inspires me a lot. Seeing different topics and ideas floating around the Internet really gets me thinking. My favorite living artist is Halsey. She is actually a musician who makes art on the side, and she is a painter.

I wish that I could own one of Andy Warhol’s prints, more specifically the piece called, “Reigning Queens”. I feel that would be so cool and Warhol is the reason why I fell in love with the whole Pop art era.

Where do you find ideas for your creative work?

Normally for ideas, I get them from life events or seeing something on the Internet that I really like. Lately , I have been doing a lot of portraits. They are all of my friends using pictures that I have taken on them.

What does being creative mean to you? What is the best advice you ever had about how to be more creative?

Being creative to me means freedom and self-expression. Sometimes if I don’t make something for long time I feel almost lost and empty. Most of the time if I think of something I really want to see, I make it to see what that idea would look like. The most important advice I have ever gotten was, “Look at what is going on in front of you and make something out of it.” Everyone has a different story and your art can showcase what you see and how you interpret your life events.

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