Kara is an artist who lives in Southern California with her supportive husband, Jeff, and their three creative and inspiring children, Charlotte, Claire, and Brady. Kara has 20+ years of experience in teaching and curriculum development. She began her career as an elementary school teacher in 1998 working with children ages six through 12.
In 2008, she began teaching college courses, online, to adults studying to be teachers! She found it very rewarding to work with those that had a passion for teaching others! In 2018, she stepped away from teaching education courses to work full-time as an artist, art instructor, and mentor. Her work as an online instructor quickly transferred over to teaching art to students all over the world. Kara is known by her students, both online and in-person, for providing a safe place for individuals to learn at their own pace, in a space that they feel they can try anything and feel supported and encouraged. She feels very lucky to get to do what she loves every day, and that is create art and mentor others on their personal creative paths.
Kara has always been drawn to creating portraits, probably because of her love for people. Kara’s style is somewhat impressionist. Her work has been described as colorful and bold. It is her goal to create a portrait that makes the viewer want to know more about the story of the person in the painting. She often paints her children as they inspire her the most. Kara wants her audience to be drawn to what is happening in the lives of the individual at the moment that they were painted. Having worked with children, she knows how difficult it can be to grow up, and she wants to capture all of the feelings of her own children that they experience with each new day of their lives. Whatever the feeling, happiness, angst, sadness, anger, etc. she is hoping to capture it and help her audience to feel it.