Season 1: The Chateau Season
Episode 14: Katherine Greer, Visual artist, Singer-Songwriter
In this episode, I interview Katherine Greer, known as Katie, a visual artist from the Santa Ynez Valley in Santa Barbara County, California. Katie works across multiple mediums including oil painting, charcoal, soft and oil pastels, and pencil work, and she also writes songs and stories.
Her driving purpose for creating art is to give viewers the feeling of love – she wants people to see and feel loved through her work, or to have an attachment to a piece that brings back good memories. She describes her creative process as very sporadic, with ideas coming to her unexpectedly – sometimes in dreams, sometimes on walks in nature, sometimes just spontaneously deciding to paint someone like her friend Neda. Katie opens up about the challenges of maintaining a creative practice while raising children and how she’s had to put her creativity on the back burner because her life isn’t currently an art-giving lifestyle. She explains that her ideal routine involves being alone with her thoughts in a quieter space, settling into the right mental state, because creativity has to come organically – you can’t force it when you’re too overwhelmed, depressed, or not mentally there.
Her inspiration comes from life itself, from everyone she’s met, from music (like when she drew Paul Simon because she couldn’t attend his concert), and from missing home. Katie offers beautiful advice about listening to yourself and never giving up on your creative calling, even when others question you or when you hate what you’re creating. She describes every piece as being like a relationship – sometimes loving it, sometimes wanting to tear it up, but knowing there will always be light at the end where you and the piece agree with each other.
Connect with Katherine Greer
