Kristin Harvey artist
My artistic journey started when I was 5 when my father built my sister and I each a wall sized chalk board and gave us every color of chalk under the sun. I was very fortunate to grow up believing I was an artist and feeling the love and support of family in that identity. I was also lucky to have been taught and influenced by many talented teachers, both in public schools and in our local arts community in Fresno, California.
Armed with my portfolio, I applied and was accepted into the Academy of Art College in San Francisco, CA. The school had a work study program back then and I was able to clean and paint the school during breaks to pay for most of my tuition. During my last semester, I responded to an opportunity to work in video games at Activision and began my digital art career. In 1990 I graduated from the Academy with a BFA in Illustration and jumped into the corporate world of video game design and development. While at Sega, I was given the chance to design and build Sega of America’s first website. This led to a fulfilling career as a website and user experience designer.
Throughout my digital design career, I continued my illustration work as a traditional medium freelancer on the side creating art for newspapers, magazines and books. In the early 2000’s I finally had the studio space to create large scale paintings on canvas and I soon knew that was what I wanted to do for my full-time career.
In 2015 my husband and I moved to Southern Arizona to be closer to family and I was immediately inspired by my surroundings in the Sonoran Desert. The color of the sunsets, intriguing cactus shapes and beautiful mountain vistas grabbed my attention and I was hooked. I started selling my paintings at a small local Farmers Market and continued in my professional digital career. For the next 8 years I steadily grew my art practice into selling cards and prints at local gift shops, participating in art shows and festivals and eventually showing in galleries. In September 2022 I left the corporate life to paint full-time.
My art today reflects my love of the desert and appreciation of the Mexican Folk Art and celebration culture which inspire my color choices. My work is moving towards abstraction while I still find my favorite desert elements to bring out in my otherwise intuitive process. My hope is that my artwork will take the viewer on a journey through shape, movement and color that will allow them to see all the beauty there is to behold in the American Southwest.
