I have had many people ask where my inspiration for art work comes from. There are a few things that have always inspired me. The biggest inspiration was fairy tales, then watching my dad, Bud Green, create artwork, and then lastly trips to Hobby Lobby with Grandma Reneau (Mimaw). She always collected art prints and exposed to me some of the classic artists which I have been compared to recently, including Waterhouse and Degas.
Throughout my time as an artist, I have had several people tell me that I needed to stick to certain genre or theme for my artwork. However, that has never been a desire of mine. My passion has always been to tell stories and have my viewers see the images in my head. Which also made creating my series, The Adventures of the Cow Bayou Boys such a perfect project for me. Because I was able to create the scenes in my stories so that the reader could see the book come to life. You see, as a kid my mom and dad would always read me books. I especially loved it when my Dad would read from my favorite book, A Treasury of Children's Literature. I loved how animated he would become as he read the lines for each character. Especially "The Three Billy Goats Gruff". When he would read about that Troll coming out from under the bridge, and I was able to see in the illustrations the big ugly troll, it added all the more to the story.
Everything about that book was inspiring to me, from the mermaids to the prince climbing the tower to save the princess, to the troll under the bridge, and even Little Red Riding Hood meeting the Bad Wolf, all of it was so influential to my art. The artwork in the book itself was an absolute masterpiece that drew you in and made it to where you wanted to never leave the pages. I loved how vibrant the colors were, the smoothness of the art, and the way that the fairy tale art work challenged everything that we thought we knew about art and the world. It made you wonder if it really was a reality that we did not know existed. Even the title page itself created a sense of wonder, of if while as a kid we slept, that the fairies did not come out to play with us.
The Mermaids made you think of the Mermaid Lagoon in Neverland and made the viewer want to find them and swim with them. Every page was another world to get lost in. That is what I wanted for my art, to draw you in and pull the viewer into the story that they seen in the painting. And that can be seen with several of my personal pieces. Especially the piece The Oracle. The other thing that I have done with each of my pieces is that I always put a story or a quote with each piece to help add to the story. For the Oracle it was, "In a godless and moral-less world filled with greed. We find ourselves no longer caring about our neighbor. No longer making it a point to take care of the Earth that we were put here to tend to. Instead, everything has became about money, being the next big thing, keeping up with what everyone else has and having the things we don't have. We no longer care about the simple things that used to make people happy. A simple shake of a hand, a smile at someone walking by, or a "how are you today", these are now almost non-existent. Our focus has became solely ourselves and what the world can do for us. It has became rare to see someone doing a good deed just because it is the right thing.
If we continue down this path, we will surely be our own destruction. Ask yourself, what can you do to make a difference. "
It was during the time that my dad, Bud Green, was reading me fairy tales and telling me legends and stories passed down through the family, that I would also be inspired by his own artwork. You see when my dad was younger, he would create art a lot in his free time, but as he got older and stayed busy working in the logging industry and then the plants later on, he lost time for art. It would not be until much later in life that he would finally pick back up the pencil and start back to art. But while I was young, I would watch him draw pictures of my mom, whitetail deer, muscle cars, train robbers, and whatever came to mind.
This specific piece was always one of my favorites. I loved how majestic the horse looked and how the Native American was hiding waiting to catch the horse to claim it as his own. My favorite part about the piece was that it could be viewed in several different ways, each telling a different story.
Being inspired by his artwork, I would ask my dad to show me how to draw a tree, a boat, a horse, or whatever. He would for fun most of the times. One time he drew me a unicorn with a black leather jacket while smoking a cigarette, haha. But one day, he told me, "Katey, I cannot teach you how to draw. You have to learn how to draw on your own by drawing what you see." That was the best advice he could give me. Just draw what you see. For the first few years I would get mad because I could not draw the trees how I wanted to or a lot of other things I wanted to. My parents would ask me about the leaves or other details. After a while , we learned the reason why I was not seeing the details was because I was technically blind. But it is amazing what a pair of glasses can do for your eyes, and after that my detail skills continued to get better and better.
I never did take art classes until my 10th year where I had an amazing Art Teacher named Keith Hoke. He seen my potential and always made it a point to push me to my limits and try new things. Even after High School, he has continued to support my art. I remember that I only wanted to use pencils and Mr. Hoke made me learn how to use acrylic paints and I created my very first painting which was a cow that was owned by a girl that went to school with me. After I created that piece, Grandma Reneau (Mimaw) found out about how I could paint and draw and pushed me into the worlds of oil paints with a floral painting. After it was finished, we went to Hobby Lobby and picked a frame out for it.
I had always known that Grandma Reneau appreciated art. As a kid, she would make sure to take us to museums, theatrical plays, ballets, and anything art related. She was also very big into collecting prints of works from the old masters that she would order or get from Hobby Lobby. She would pick out the most beautiful frames and have them displayed in her house in all of the different rooms. One of my favorite pieces that she had for a long time, was hidden under a bed in the guest bedroom and has always a big inspiration to me. That piece is The Lady of Shalott painted by John William Waterhouse.
I loved everything about the piece. Especially the amount of detail while also being somewhat impressionistic. Everything about the piece was beautiful.
So I had known that Mimaw was an appreciator of art, and I knew that she had used to paint. But, I guess I never thought of how much she actually knew. She had owned a gallery where she would create paintings and my grandfather would build the frames for her paintings. Once she went to school to get her Doctorate in Education, the art had to come to stop though. She did not paint again for almost 20 years. But once she seen that I was painting, she felt inspired once again and picked back up her paints. She said it was hard having to relearn how to hold the brush but that she wanted to get back to being able to do what she used to do. So every time I would go to grandma's house for the summer or to visit, I would be given the task of creating a piece and finishing it within 3 days with her. She would tell me when the proportions or the contrasts were off and would show me tricks and tips that she could remember. She was in her late 70s to early 80s and it was not much longer after this that Dementia started to take hold of her. But during my time with her, I learned so much that helped to mold me into an even better artist.
Several have asked what inspires my art, in my choice of paintings and style. If anything it could be said life in general. They say that as people we are a little bit of every person and encounter that we come across in life. We cook our Ramen noodles a certain way because some kid in Junior High taught us. You have a certain lotion that you tend to lean towards because a girl in your first semester of college introduced you to it. You season your dumpling with crushed red pepper and add a stick of butter because that is what your grandpa said was best. It is all of the little things that build up over time that inspire and guide us in life. The same can be said with my art. Every time I paint, another memory comes back. With it a new found or old story, it is just my job to add that small detail into the painting in some shape or form.
Let me know what else you would like to know, and I will make your to make a blog about it. I look forward to hearing from all of you.
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