art + design + illustration

Hello. My name is Katy.

I like to think of myself as an artist with a “designer’s personality” trying to make a living doing what I love, and finding space for personal reflection while honoring the creative process.

I originally started studiofive10 as a freelance boutique but it quickly reoriented itself into being a blog devoted to sharing my passions and musings online.

My background includes working as a Director of Marketing for a real estate firm in downtown Chicago for three years. For those couple years, I had an intense but amazing business experience honing my design skills and starting a Marketing Department from the ground up. However, my heart ached for a more expressive and creative life. After much soul searching, trying to figure out if I wanted to continue with an MFA in design (which would’ve been the most logical solution), I looked into my heart and found . . . an artist there. So, much to my husband’s utter shock and bewilderment, I picked up and moved to the middle of the cornfields in Illinois to pursue a MA in Painting and Drawing for 1 year (which made me on track to purse my MFA in art two years later). Something that I had never ever seriously considered.

However, after experiencing 3 years of full-time academia as well as peeking behind the scenes of the art gallery world, I’ve come out the other side quite disillusioned. While grateful for all the learning and exposure I received while going through those experiences, I’m still surprised that I’m am not that much closer to locating my true sense of self through my artwork.

So this blog is becoming a safe place for me to explore and go back to the true essence of why I was inspired to become an artist in the first place. Those first “ah hah!” moments of realizing that this is what I really wanted to do, why I wanted to paint in my studio all day and the challenge of actually doing it. Forget the critiques, the professors, the gallery owners, what the industry wants and where the art world is going. It all comes down to . . . PAINT!  I feel we are all artists. We are all creative. And this blog is my daily questioning of what drives me to create and what, simply, feeds my soul. My interests include travel, history, spirituality, as well as art and design. And it’s more exciting to share multiple parts of yourself instead of only specializing in a one-dimensional face. And I realized that’s what I need to reflect back into my artwork. The inspiration that drives you comes back to yourself. And this blog is a venue for me to post in words, photos and sometimes video, the creative process, the journey we all are on.

I am, by nature, an extremely private person (INFP), so the thought of sharing so much of myself online is still absolutely terrifying! But with each step, I find incredible freedom in expressing myself in so many ways and the lessons I’ve learned along the path to becoming an artist are still alive and present here on my blog. I sincerely believe everyone is creative and I hope by sharing insights, passions, inspiration and just the fascinating process of what is means to create, will simply, inspire others.

Thus studiofive10 was born!