ARTIST STATEMENT
Absolute uniqueness—in a time where everything has been done before, this is something I believe we all strive for. We want fresh ideas, creative solutions to static problems, and we want to break through the white noise of our surroundings.
My professional artistic identity is Toxic Widow Customs. The idea behind the Toxic Widow image is to create something unique, something simultaneously cute and creepy, to remain fresh and custom-designed, to open up the process by which clients and artists work together in the creation of unique artwork.
The mood behind it is rather dark, maybe even deranged, removed somewhat from reality and living in a realm of mysticism and night.
As an artist, I strive to emphasize what I consider an essential element to the creation of art: self-exploration. In all its forms, art is a way to take what we see, the materials we have access to, and combine it with our imagination, to integrate with it the things that we usually only see inside our heads. In my head, comedy & tragedy unfold in a massive graveyard, a myriad of demons and dolls dancing and laughing in the moonlight.
Some of the subject matter I use is purely on whimsy, but I am also a somewhat avid digester of world news, interested in addressing current topics and making impactful statements, and I intend to convey this by incorporating the fantastical horrors inside my head with the very tangible horrors of reality, horrors that the general public may be less aware about.
I like to research everything at least a little bit before I invest creative energy into it, I have an obsession with building backstories, creating characters, exploring the existing facts and lore about a subject to build a set of icons I aim to use in my illustrations.
I am influenced by artistic movements & genres like Surrealism, Art nouveau, street art, and the American Traditional tattoo style.
Most importantly, I am interested in working with clients to formulate creative solutions to otherwise vanilla problems. And if the problem happens to be related to demonic animals wielding scythes and chanting incantations, well then hey, you may have stumbled upon just the thing you need.
ARTIST BIO
A penchant for black lace, leather, and horror films, a tendency towards the surreal and an eye for design, and a need to create: these are what brought about the idea of Toxic Widow Customs. The face of the production, a long-time resident of Colorado (native to southern California) and a student of illustration at the Rocky Mountain College of Art & Design who prefers the name “Kitty”, is a humble servant of the arts, a vessel through which many avenues of creativity have passed and left their mark; amongst the illustrative elements of her past, she has performed in dramatic productions and has played the violin for 12 years. After taking an interest in found-object sculpture, she crafted a giant demon out of twigs & won a Silver Key award in the Scholastics Art and Writing competition in 2012. Why a giant demon, one might ask? She believes art is a wonderful way to “let the demons out,” to express the most illicit feelings, to build them into creatures and set them free by manifesting them in the physical world through artistic creation. And they’re safe to get up close to this way!
Besides the arts, she has interests in a myriad of hobbies and areas of study, everything from cooking and gardening to witchcraft and the occult. She enjoys watching horror movies, reading Shakespeare, taking walks, attending concerts and music festivals, and learning new things.
Her degree in Illustration is supplemented by studies in graphic design, as well as personal endeavors in sculpture, namely soft sculpture and textile work.