How did you start making art in the first place?

Katherine Lord: My family tells me and shows me that it started when I was about three or four years old. I took colored egg shells and made trees out of them. If I had to pick a time and a place where it all started, it would be then. I was at my Grandmom’s kitchen table during Easter and I insisted on taking everyone’s egg garbage and making something out of them.

Krista Jaworski: I started doing art at a very young age, probably pre-school. I was always just very creative and hungry to get better. I started taking art more seriously in high school, and realized what I liked and didn’t like to do. Now I’m roped in; I can’t stop.

Colin Mallee: I actually started out drawing. I would doodle all the time in grade school and even tried to start my own comic series that ran for three issues. In high school I started taking art more seriously and it was my art teacher who pushed me towards painting. I hated it, because it wasn’t the same as drawing at all. I didn’t start to love it until last year when I painted as an independent study. I found that when I painted things that I liked it was more fun. Then this year when I did my senior project I found a way to combine drawing and painting through my graphic style and now I love to paint.

Where do you find yourself taking inspiration from for your art?

KL: My inspiration comes from my thoughts. Specifically whatever current things I am processing at that given time. Things I am usually processing come from my past. The memories are events, experiences and even conversations that have severely impacted my life.

KJ: I pull the most inspiration from social media and the way people live their lives on and offline. I’m a double major in communications and art, so I’ve studied social media, and my own experiences intrigued me. Sometimes the way people use their social media really makes me angry, and from that anger I saw potential to showcase these problems in my art. I’m not anti-social media, I mean I’m a very involved user of many apps. But I see people taking excessive measures to gain arbitrary validation, and caring way too much about the results, that it just made me want to snap people into reality and realize they’re freaking out for no reason.

CM: Mostly anime that I really enjoy, like “Dragon Ball Z” and “One-Punch Man.” [They are] shows that I appreciate for their outrageous concepts that are present- ed as common place. It’s really amazing how normal some anime pretend to be.

How do you think your style has evolved since your freshman year?

KL: It has definitely become more sophisticated. I think that it is really hard to say exactly how it has evolved, but I have definitely picked up a lot of knowledge that has helped create my current work.

KJ: Freshman and sophomore year I mainly did the assignments and perfected my techniques. I drew more and made pen drawings showcasing typography. Junior year I discovered 1) I liked painting and 2) I was good at painting portraits. Before then I avoided faces altogether. I didn’t want to paint some flowers for some assignment so I painted Albert Einstein instead from a Xerox hanging in the art room. When it turned out well, the natural next step was to paint many famous figures, and that was fun. Senior year, I kept the faces going, there’s almost always a face in most of my work, but I used different techniques to give the same impression. As far as the bright colors go, I did that randomly and since it was way more fun than the colors we see in real life, I kept doing it.

CM: I’m more confident now and my work reflects that, I think. I stopped caring so much about what people think of it and really focus on whether I enjoy the piece or not. My paintings have turned into little inside jokes with myself and I love it.

What advice do you have for anyone hesitant to do art?

KL: I would say if anyone is hesitant than they must try it, in fact I implore them to. Art has many uses, and in my case it has helped me heal and process everyday life. It can let you express yourself, it can allow your mind to have a distraction and it can give you a sense of accomplishment. Art can do so much for anyone, even if they are not “artistic.” I truly believe that it is an important part of life that no one should miss out on. So, basically my advice is to just get started, go and do anything and any type of art.

KJ: Just do it. So many people are scared to even try because they’ve given themselves some standard of what it means to be “good.” Just because you can’t paint a bowl of fruit that looks exactly like the bowl of fruit in front of you doesn’t mean you’re bad at art. at may have been what art was hundreds of years ago, but now art can be literally anything you want. Just grab some paint and do it.

CM: Everyone can make art. Even if you think all you draw is stick figures, that is still art. As long as you are enjoying what you are doing, then you are making art.