We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Catrina Higgs. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Catrina below.

Catrina, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

I have minimal memories of my childhood- but I do have a few memories of being artistically talented at various ages and then as an adult despite the bullshit I would get into as a young, nieve adult, without quality work, money, a vehicle,addiction I would find a way to paint, and then December 2019 i had my 1st child & when she turned 3 months old, the entire world had a pandemic and went into lockdown and everything changed. I quit my supervisor posting at a distillery and stayed home with her to keep her safe which was mentally & physically really hard for me.
So I started to paint, and painted more and then I made an Instagram page for my art process and then started selling that art and now I co-own an art studio in central Kentucky.

Catrina, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is Catrina Renee Higgs, I’m 38 and i Have 2 Children under 4, Freelyn & Honesten. I’ve been in the most crucial life saving, tolerant and loving partnership for 12 years with a bearded sex symbol named Chad Lindsey. I’ve been a creative all of my life and a painter since about Highschool. I think its important to say it out loud, for myself that i knew it all then- because looking back i did know, that i was creative an early age, more so than other children, that it was obvious there was something a bit more in my creations, the attention i gave it. But then that was all sort of diminished by life and its circumstances. the cultivator for me was i was raised by a single mother, a fire pistol redhead who by the age of 23 had 3 babies consecutively by 3 different men who were non participatory in the raising of their children, no support of any kind. my mother raised us the best she could with the resources she had in the 1980s in whatever trailer park she could afford. as you could imagine life was not easy, not full of a lot of doting supportive attention.
so we fast forward, we moved 18 times by the time i was 18.
every year i went to a different school in a new place. 5 high schools in 3 states.
my childhood memories are far and few but what stick s out for me is these small moments where teachers would celebrate my artistry, i would receive rewards for my work without trying and before your imagination visualizes a the louvre & mona Lisa- i’m an abstract neo expressionist painter – my work primarily focuses on representing my emotions, motherhood, womanhood and mental health but also an ever evolving array of subject matter, my work is intuitive and almost always with feministic undertones. I’m a self taught artist, i have no pedigree, no formal education, this is no “from the dirt floors to Harvard” story, more like from meth to art studio owner.

I may have veered from the interview question a bit so Ill reign it back in
In the present, 2024 im a fulltime painter and i co-own and art studio called ‘The Painted Lady’ in Campbellsville Kentucky with a friend & Mother Artist Tattooist Maranda Fowler. Its a 700sqft Multifuntional Art studio in a small kentucky town. We are rounding our first year being open- its a kind of radical little spot- The overall mission is to create art accesibility in a community that could use more and also be a safe haven for mothers and the shop has irregular hours and is only open by appointments and events to cater to our real lifes raising 5 kids under 5 between us, we have members now that have 24 hour access to create and then we also host events & collaborate with other community businesses to offer events to the public that are art centric. there is no pre-designed mold for what we do, we are not a corporation, big business, we have no financial support, its all on our own backs- we just knew that the way the system had been designed that it was designed to exclude us not to include us- so we said- Fuck that.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

the pandemic was the scorching life changer. pre-pandemic i had been a 3rd shift supervisor for a bottling line at a distillery.
i had my 1st child 3 months before the country went into lockdown and by the time she was 9 months old i decided that working 12 hour shifts in an industry that never stopped its tourism, that it was too much of a risk, so i quit.
what is a pivotal detail in this story is we bought a cabin in the middle of nowhere and so i became incredibly isolated, sober and a new mother at 34.
That event changed my life- my identity had always been tethered to hard work and without work i had no value, i was essentially in natures therapy being in the woods all alone with my thoughts after previously being an alcoholic since i was 15 now with this tiny baby who i was solely responsible for.
then UNKNOWINGLY came matrescence & postpartum anxiety that was exasperated by the pandemic. I was suffering from a vagal nerve issue after giving birth because labor was so hard on my body, I couldn’t get any help for because no one knew what was wrong plus the hospitals were over run
a cornucopia of painful seemingly endless strife through my privileged lens during that time.
so then came the art, being with a child at home can dictate the kind of art you do and when you do if you are wanting to work independently and i just kept making paintings on canvases trying to convey my motherhood experience and then i started an instagram to post the things i was working on in front of a world wide community and then i opened an etsy which became a very validating form of income that allowed me to go to a thriftstore guilt free every month. now, 4 years later here i am recieving grants from the kentucky foundation for women to create a mural.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

yes. my goal which is a big long term generational goal is, “fuck this”. i say that intellectually with a dash of spit. i say that lovingly and with conviction,
fuck this life not designed, built, created, squandered without the inclusiveness of women
the proverbially table is falically shaped & white as the day is long.
the starvation, the cancer in our food, the war, the devastation of mother nature.
the gray concrete and hard surfaces, the emptiness of public spaces, the food deserts and the invisible lines that separate us all, fuck all of the pain and suffering that could be so easily rectified- fuck greedy corporations and the corrupted ways its intercepted our beautiful minds, all of this beauty all of this vastness, this cosmic miracle we all are just manipulated and controlled- fuck the bleakness its created in our youths and the sad corridors for all of our elders. fuck the lack of art in common spaces and fuck the lack of love an support for girls & women through their lives. i have a Ghandi quote tattooed backwards on my throat that says ‘be the change you wish to see’ and that’s my goal, so i say fuck that and bit by bit i try to one brush stroke at a time try to change all of that by not accepting it in small ways everyday.
and if we for thousands of generations raised our daughters as wolves and warriors who could build the table and pull their own seat instead of ornamental damsels then i wouldn’t be harping on this laptop.

you might be like…what just happened? lol -how does that tye into the question?
art can change things. representation matters. if i do it then someone knows they can, if i push back my daughter will grow to know how to- my children will grow up seeing their mother as a full person, in artistically creative & empowered spaces. more than their chauffer, their maid & cook. the art is a segue or a conductor to a much bigger and profound belief.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @catrinahiggs @thepaintedladyartstudio
• Other: Etsy.com/shop/catrinahiggs Society6.com/catrinahiggs Linktr.ee/ThePaintedLadyartstudio Represented by @THMTHRSHP