Karen Barbour is an illustrator and artist whose rich, passionate paintings have graced the pages of The New York Times and many other publications. She has created a striking set of children's books, an advertising billboard in Japan, and is regularly exhibited in galleries. Her paintings are bold, graphic, and layered with meaning. Barbour's work is currently on display at the Zeitgeist Gallery in Nashville, through February 27.

MY LIFE:
I live in Inverness, California. I got my BA at UC Davis and MFA in film from the San Francisco Art Institute. I’ve been working as an artist and illustrator since about 1984, when I went to New York from California.

There were no artists in my family, but my parents had a good friend, Stan Galli, who was a renowned illustrator who did editorial and commercial work. We modeled for him sometimes. Our neighbor, Tom Quinn, was a painter and he did our portraits.

I was always drawing horses and labeling all their parts and trying to draw them realistically. I got in trouble for drawing naked people.  Later I wanted to be a medical illustrator.

For jobs, I took care of an old lady for two and a half years, worked on a ranch in Oregon, was a nursing assistant in a convalescent hospital, and worked for a caterer in San Francisco. We catered society parties and porn shoots.

MY WORKSPACE:
My studio is up the hill from our house. It’s like a barn—no insulation and mice and big windows.

HOW I MAKE MY ILLUSTRATIONS:
I use gouache, ink, acrylic, house paint, oil, and sometimes collage on paper. A lot of times I’m working on backgrounds or paintings or making random images in my sketchbooks, and I’m always changing them and covering over different parts and adding things. They sometimes become illustrations.

MY FIRST BIG BREAK:
When I first graduated from SFAI, I went around trying to get jobs painting animation cells. They were paying about $4 an hour, but I didn’t get hired. I had a show in San Francisco and one of the psychedelic rock poster artists, Victor Moscoso, came and told me that I should be an illustrator. He gave me a list of names at magazines in New York, and I took my portfolio to every one. I called art directors and was terrified to meet them, but I did.

An art director at New York magazine told me my portfolio— actually a bunch of messy slides —was terrible. But she asked me to illustrate five nightclubs for an article. After they were published, I was working all the time. Next I called up an MTV producer and said the president of Warner Communications suggested I call (he didn’t—he had no idea who I was), and I got two animation jobs doing the MTV logo.

MY INFLUENCES:
My painting teacher at UC Davis, Mike Henderson, is a brilliant artist who works in oil, making abstract paintings. He’s also a filmmaker and musician. He taught me that you always keep working, no matter what—that’s what’s important. You always do your work. It’s the commitment that’s most important. I think of him every day.

MY MOST ADMIRED CREATIVE PERSON:
The architect John Marsh Davis isn’t well know, but he changed my life. He was inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright and Greene and Greene. He made beautiful things in a spontaneous way—chopping a hole in the ceiling with a chain saw, painting a Persian rug on the floor, making secret buildings behind hedges, and collaging patterns on a broken mirror. I admire his ability to follow through on his epic visions, his sketchbooks, his glamorous drawings, and his James Bond personality.

MY CREATIVE INSPIRATION:
I’m obsessed with Cormac McCarthy and the stories of Shirley Jackson and Flannery O’Connor and Rohan O’Grady’s The Curse of the Montrolfes. I love the designer William Morris and reading random facts about medicine and philosophy and illustrating them in a neurotic way in my notebooks. I draw and while I’m drawing I listen to books on tape and also glance at old paperbacks by Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov from my parents’ basement. I have piles of old Antiques magazines, and Peterson’s Ladies' National Magazine and illustrated medical magazines from the 60s. I’m attracted to beautiful paintings and illustrations in a crazy way—just looking makes me happy.

THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE OF WORKING ALONE:
I have the tendency to be a hermit, so I have to make myself get out into the world.

A MEMORABLE ASSIGNMENT FROM THE PAST YEAR:
I’ve been working on mostly black-and-white paintings, where I am illustrating all the things I’ve written down in my notebooks over the years. I glue paper on top of the mistakes and then keep painting over it.  They were in a group show at Fouladi Projects Gallery in San Francisco and now at Zeitgeist Gallery in Nashville. They saw the illustrations on my website and then asked me to make wall installations of them.

DREAM ASSIGNMENT:
It would be fun to do fashion illustration.

MY FAVORITE ART DIRECTOR:
The wonderful Hiroko Tanaka. I did several billboards and advertising posters for the department store Mitsukoshi in The Ginza and was in a show she curated at The Shiseido Gallery with some amazing other illustrators. We also did calendars and plates.

OTHER WORK:
I mostly have been painting on my own lately. My aunt died and I’ve been painting her blue-and-white china and her frog collection and her photos. In the past I’ve done several children’s books and have recently written and illustrated a YA novel.

HOW I STAY CURRENT:
I just keep bumbling along—going towards what’s really interesting to me and always happy if someone calls me to do a job. If I get an idea about something I just immediately rush to it and try to capture what it is that’s making a spark. I always think that’s the most important thing. As it evolves it often fails and I’m surrounded by failure in my studio, but I continue revising over and over. It’s a process that I’m familiar with.

I have also been working on some zines. 

HOW I PROMOTE MYSELF:
I send postcards, email new work, enter some competitions. I’m terrible at social media, but give it a try every once in awhile.

ADVICE FOR SOMEONE STARTING OUT:
In terms of getting your work out there: I lived next door to a big fashion photographer when I was in New York and was just starting out. He said that someone should be looking at your work every day.

See more Karen Barbour illustrations, new work, and updates:
Karen Barbour website
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