I paint for the feeling. The color is how I get there.
Hi, I’m Kristy —
A Pacific Northwest artist, photographer, and graphic designer who has been making things her whole life. Making art is how I process the world — the good and the hard.
My grandfather was a painter. His work hung throughout the house I grew up in, and his birds were everywhere — distinctive, slightly stylized, full of character. I didn’t realize until I was well into my own practice how deeply those paintings had taken root in me. When I started painting birds myself, they came out with the same spirit: not strictly realistic, not fully abstract, but unmistakably themselves. My birds are mine now — evolved through my own eye and palette and process — but the lineage runs straight back to him.
I work primarily in acrylics on canvas. My subjects wander — I’ll spend weeks on florals, then pivot to abstracts because something I saw on a walk demanded it. What stays consistent is color. Bold, sometimes unexpected, always intentional. I want the work to have presence.
My studio is in the Pacific Northwest, which means I live with dramatic skies, evergreen forests, and light that changes personality three times before noon. You’ll see all of that in the work — even in the pieces that don’t look like landscapes at all.
Artist Photo
Artist Statement
“Art found me during a difficult season of my life. When words were too hard, color gave me a way to feel joy again — and it still does. I paint in acrylics because it’s how I express what I can’t say out loud, and it’s what makes me feel grounded and alive. My florals, abstracts, birds, and Pacific Northwest landscapes are all made from real emotion, in bold and hopeful color. When one of my paintings finds a home, it carries a little of that feeling with it. That’s the part I love most.
“My work begins with color — not subject matter. I start by asking what energy I want to make visible, and then I find the image that holds it. A flower becomes a way to talk about abundance. A bird in stillness becomes a meditation on attention. An abstract becomes an honest record of a mood I couldn’t name any other way.”
Those birds carry particular weight for me. My grandfather painted birds with a distinctive hand — a style all his own — and I grew up looking at them without knowing I was being shaped by them. My own birds have evolved: my palette, my marks, my interpretation. But the spirit of what he did is there. It’s the part of painting that feels least like craft and most like inheritance.
My goal is always the same: to make something that has genuine feeling in it. I want someone to look at one of my paintings and feel something shift — a little brightness, a little stillness, a little more awake to the color around them.
Studio Photo
Beyond the Easel
Painting isn’t my only creative language. I’m also a photographer — I’ve spent years capturing the Pacific Northwest landscape, and that eye for light and composition feeds directly into my painting practice. I also do graphic design work, which means I think about how images inhabit space, how color relationships work at scale, and how a visual story lands for the person receiving it.
All of it is connected. The painter, the photographer, the designer — they share the same eye.
About This Shop
I offer two ways to bring the work home. Original paintings are one-of-a-kind, hand-painted pieces — when they’re gone, they’re gone. Art prints and products bring the same imagery to prints, canvases, mugs, notebooks, apparel, and more, made to order at a price point that makes art accessible to everyone.
