You may be surprised that this artist worked as an accountant for many years before officially taking the leap into the painting world. I stumbled across her work while browsing Etsy a couple of months ago and I couldn’t stop looking at her paintings! What a talented woman!

“Bert the Rooster” and “Eileen the Cow” by Cari Humphry – don’t you love these names?

Cari Humphry’s paintings are so much fun! I have no idea how she brings these animals to life. It amazes me. I have so many favorites I’m not sure which one I love the most. I’m probably leaning towards “Run Chicken Run.” I enjoy the attitude the chicken seems to have as it’s running from something.

“Run Chicken Run” by Cari HumphryCapturing the typical backdrop of Fayetteville, Arkansas, Humphry grew up drawing on anything she could get her hands on and dreamt of becoming an architect. Life took her on a different path and she graduated with a degree in accounting from the University of Arkansas in 1996. After painting sporadically for many years, she decided to take a few art classes after her second child was born and hasn’t stopped painting since.

“I try to paint a couple of hours every day during the kids’ naptime. Using acrylics forces me to let go of control and be more loose and simple in my strokes – something being a stay-at-home-mom has helped me with as I rarely know what will happen beyond the next 15 minutes!”

Doing most of her paintings in acrylics, she focuses on capturing movement and light with less details. She starts with a canvas primed in a color, other than white, and outlines the composition with a watered-down base color. “Because acrylics dry so quickly, I can be more intentional and bold in my strokes and color. I just lay the paint on the canvas and have no worries of losing the strokes or the colors as I would when I work in oils.”

“Airplane in the Sky” by Cari HumphryShe’s inspired by the uniqueness of individuals and their stories, and hopes to one day be more expressionistic and try to paint people – faces, more specifically.  “If I thought I could truly capture human emotions without tightening up, I would love to paint faces.”

You can find her paintings at www.CariHumphry.com,  www.peacockgarden.etsy.com as well as on facebook under “Peacock Garden Art.”