We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Carla René a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Carla, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your creative career sooner or later?

That’s a tangled question.

After I developed Systemic Lupus in University and could no longer play my trumpet, I turned to my theatre minor and began auditioning for television and stage. I also started taking a class to learn stand-up comedy, and after killing for my “final” (we played a show at Zanies and I got to go last because I was the best), began getting lots of compliments and offers for stand-up work. That’s about the time I also began studying improvisation at Second City in Chicago, and MOST television auditions I had were improvised, so the training in comedy came in handy.

Thanks to learning how to write comedy, that led to writing fiction, and I began to get published.

After a divorce, I was on my own for the first time, and got a part-time job at Michaels in Nashville, where I was the Event Coordinator, Cashier, Front End Supervisor, and back-up floral designer. Working there got me into floral design, jewelry design, and thanks to my knowing several authors by now and publishing my work in national comedy and historical fiction magazines, I began to get hired to design web-sites for famous authors.

It wasn’t until I became homeless in 2008 after losing all 3 of my part-time jobs that in 2011 I began applying thinking of returning to school. 3 weeks after applying, I was accepted into the physics department at one of the South’s top engineering schools. I began working toward my double doctorates in Astrophysics and Applied Mathematics.

In 2015 during a summer in which I had no classes, I began painting again, only this time in coloured pencil, and I have NEVER looked back! The control I get with them is insane. I also began my own business page on Facebook, and that’s when I gained most of my supporters who then became clients.

So why did I go into all this? Because MOST artists that I know will cross-pollinate and do something else tangentially-creative when not sitting behind an art bench. So, I kind of lived my life as an artist except when I returned to University, and during that time I refused to audition or paint so I could devote my full attention to my STEM work.

Now, when I’m not painting, I am a BGI (Basic Ground Instructor) that teaches the ground-school physics to student pilots, and am a pilot myself, working toward my commercial rating. Thankfully, both jobs allow me to set my own hours, so they mesh nicely.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

At the age of 10 I was discovered as a child prodigy in both music and fine art. I took a music ear training test that they used to use before you joined band, and I was the weirdo that scored perfect: the odds of that happening were 1 in 6,000 at the time.

I chose the trumpet, because my dad had his old one from school. Soon, I was sitting 1st chair, 1st trumpet in every ensemble I ever joined. The college music director knew about me and offered me a full-ride scholarship when I applied for a mathematics degree. My high-school band director knew me from juniour high and let me join advanced band a full year early. Later that freshman year, I was sitting 2nd chair, 1st trumpet.

I won several awards and competitions in school, and eventually majored in Commercial Trumpet at the prestigious Belmont University in Nashville, while also writing Christian music and even winning a national vocal competition.

I was also continuing to hone my art skills. I began with oil pastels, and my very first painting was an Arabian horse. When it was finished, it looked EXACTLY like the photo, so I was destined for photorealism from the beginning. I then longed to do portraits in photorealism and began working on those in graphite pencil. Next was oil paints, but I could never get the full photorealism I wanted, until 2015 when on a summer break from my doctorates, I saw artists on Facebook using coloured pencil: something I’d never heard of. Their work was so photo-realistic, I couldn’t believe they were earthlings. So, thanks to a friend’s help, I ordered a basic Prismacolour set and some watercolour paper, and began my journey. My very first CP portrait was of a baby gorilla and it got published.

A few years ago, I developed a completely original technique in which I use standard coloured pencils to emulate an actual watercolour effect. I love the look of WCs, but when I tried to learn them, it was a dumpster fire. So, I turned to my pencils and knew I could do that because I had learned the technique and control through many, many, MANY hours of watching YouTube tutorials and videos, screaming, throwing papers, practicing, throwing more papers and pillows, making the cats crazy, practicing, and asking questions of those much better than myself.

Now, I am available to help and mentor younger artists who are just beginning, and so I give back by being a member of several Facebook groups dedicated solely to coloured pencil artists and their works.

I am also a VERY outspoken opponent of AI. I’ve had 2 of my paintings stolen and scraped in order to train their software, so I know what it feels like to have your work freely taken without your permission in order for some younger artist “to just practice” from a reference photo. I got news for them: there are TONS of ROYALTY-FREE IMAGE groups on Facebook that will gladly allow you to use their images so you can practice. Those who are just beginning fail to see just how wrong it is to use software that was born off the backs of artists like myself, without ONE penny or citation. It won’t be until THAT artist is trying to make a living from their craft that they will begin to see just how wrong it is to steal from another artist: it still leaves me incredulous that we have to even spell this out to another artist; if we can’t trust them to have our financial backs, then who can we trust?

I was offered my own solo show that will happen in September, 2024, and to make it unique and raise my own awareness of me as a business, I put out a call for pet models from the residents of where I live. I wanted to do a study of cats and dogs’ eyes, and I got over 300 responses from those freaks. :D Some of the photos you’re seeing are from that show.

A few years ago I opened my own Etsy shop (modern colours with a Victorian flavour for original scrapbook papers), and the tag line I created for that is “Where beauty and technology collide!” It fits because I’m able to combine my own original designs with the digital skill, then offering those in the way of cards, magnets, bookmarks, and stickers at live shows, or digital downloads. I am where I am today because of social media. It’s where I meet most of my clients, and I know art isn’t cheap. That’s why I do my best to never let money stand in the way of someone having an image they want. So, I offer payment plans, and in order to make someone feel even more special, I will hand-wrap every print and original that I send out. I add the Victorian touch through handmade cards and envelopes with sealing wax. When they open that print they sacrificed hard-earned money for, I want them to feel like it’s Christmas day and they just got the best present in the world from their most favourite person in the world.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Earlier, I describe how I was a child prodigy in two artistic fields. I also tested for MENSA early on, and was THAT kid that was always busting the bell curve in school, always shouting out the right answer.

I was also the kid that got left out of the cheerleading squad (oh, I was on it, but they hated me for being smart and good at everything I tried, so they refused to include me socially) functions. My nickname soon became “computer brain”.

During that early time when I was living my life as an artist, I was also hiding my intelligence. I had been ostracised so often for being smart, that I soon learned if I wanted any friends, I was going to have to hide that part of myself. I am Asperger’s, so that one was quite difficult!

The biggest lesson and hardest that I had to learn was that being a savant or genius at something as a kid doesn’t mean you’re going to be good at it as an adult. There’s a reason why they test a child’s IQ when they’re young, but then that IQ must be retested as an adult: because it doesn’t carry you through your entire life.

I was facing adulthood, wondering why things suddenly didn’t just open up for me; why folks just weren’t rollling out the red carpet for me. Hadn’t they heard how great I was??

Yeah, that was a HUGE wake-up call. My folks were told my talent in music and art was so extraordinary that they needed to get me a mentor. Well, being poor dairy farmers meant we couldn’t afford that. I think if I HAD been given the opportunity to have a mentor, I would have learned a lot sooner that it doesn’t matter how brilliant you WERE, now that you’re an adult you sort of have to start over and that comes from working your lovely butt completely OFF! I sucked at algebra in high-school, but I wanted to be an astrophysicist, and that is 97% advanced mathematics. So, instead of sailing on my past successes in it, I decided to add a mathematics major and face it head-on and finally get good at it. I practiced about 8 hours a day, doing book examples, repeating homework problems, asking professors for extra work, reworking all my quizes and exams, and all so I could get good at it. And do you know what? IT WORKED! Now I can do derivatives in my head and integrals with my eyes tied behind my back, and I love it. I got good at photorealism, not because I could do it as a kid, but because I continued to work at it and get really good at it.

Don’t try to sail on your past successes. Work hard in preparation toward your present ones.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

When I pictured having an art bidness and envisioned myself at my bench painting, never once did I consider just how my art would affect people.

About 2 years ago, a Facebook friend wrote me a heartbreaking DM on Messenger, telling me that she loved seeing the work that I shared, and she had looked all over for an artist, but so far, couldn’t find someone to do the painting she envisioned in her head.

See, she had lost her dad just a few months previous, and it was killing her. They had been incredibly close, and he was her person, and now he was gone and her mum had completely shut down. She and I are both born-again Christians, and when she asked me if I could do the painting in her head, I immediately said “yes”, even though I wasn’t sure how I was going to pull it off. She said she kept seeing her dad walking along the beach with Jesus. Tall order, right?!

I immediately prayed that God would show me how to do it, and began Googling royalty-free photos of Jesus. She had sent me several of her dad, but none of them were what I would call perfect. But as it happens, I suddenly saw one on iStock that would perfectly work with one she had given me. I paid the 7 bucks for the rights, threw both photos into an old version of Paint Shop Pro, and went to work. Soon, I had merged the two in such a way that it looked like Jesus was touching him on the shoulder, right there on the beach in my watercolour effect.

She STILL mentions periodically how healing that portrait has been for her in her journey of grief; as a result of that transaction, we have become wonderfully-close friends. After having it framed, she hung it on her wall so that she could see it as she descended her stairs in the morning, and it’s the last thing she sees at night.

Another friend commissioned one from me of her friend’s little dog that she lost. She, too, still reports back at how comforting that painting has been to her friend.

In preparation for my upcoming solo show, 3 of those pets that I painted passed away. I know now just how precious and comforting those paintings will be for that family to treasure.

So, yeah, I get a lot of memorial commissions, and I bleed all over each one with my own empathy for that client who is hurting. I am so very grateful that God uses my art in order to help so many through their own journies of grief.

That is a pretty powerful thing for a nobody artist from a nothing dairy farm no one’s ever heard of.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.glittercatstudios.com
• Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/glittercatstudios
• Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/glittercatstudios1
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@glittercatstudios
• Other: Etsy: http://glittercatstudios.etsy.com Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/glittercatart

Image Credits
All images are my own.