We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Kat Lam. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Kat below.
Kat, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Parents play a huge role in our development as youngsters and sometimes that impact follows us into adulthood and into our lives and careers. Looking back, what’s something you think you parents did right?
This is an interesting question given my background. I’m first generation Chinese American and I’m fortunate enough to have parents that break the stereotypes associated with Asian parents. Don’t get me wrong, discipline and studying were top priorities in my household growing up, but they also created an environment for me that made space for my creativity. They realized the joy art brought me at a very young age and really encouraged me to play and explore—they exposed me to a wide rage of art institutions on a regular basis and allowed me to pursue a variety of art activities in my free time, like summertime art camp. Following your heart and what makes you happy was an important lesson they taught me from a young age and even to this day as an adult. While they both find my unconventional lifestyle as an artist confusing, they’re still supportive of my career.
Kat, 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?
I’ve been an artist for the entirety of my life and have a background in art & creative direction. I was doing that full-time for over a decade up until about seven years ago when I really needed a significant pivot in my life. That’s when I turned my focus to doing art full-time and found an irreplaceable joy in painting large scale murals. I take my expertise from working at various agencies as a Creative Director and apply those skills to my mural business now. I love working collaboratively with my clients to transform their spaces into areas that have a welcoming vibe and create placemaking. I’ve painted for a variety clients internationally for public and private art commissions. I think what sets me apart from other muralists is that I do more than just paint on one wall—I really consider the flow of a space and apply my designs to the floors, ceilings, and whatever other interesting architectural elements are in the space. I’ve recently started to incorporate 3D elements in my murals as well, which has been incredibly fun.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
I mentioned my earlier career at the beginning of this interview, but I used to work as an art director and creative director on the agency side in advertising. I went to school for art direction and had a pretty successful career in that field for over a decade. Around 2015, I started to get creatively frustrated and turned back to my fine art practice as means of an outlet. I rekindled my love for illustration and painting. I was picking up small illustration jobs for fun and decided to try out painting at larger scale on a whim. I was pretty senior at my agency at the time and went into our office over a weekend and painted a mural for the very first time without getting permission from any of the founders. I figured I could just paint it back to white if they hated. It took me a little off guard how natural the installation process felt and I was filled with happiness in a way I’d never experienced before. After painting that mural, I slowly started acquiring more and more mural opportunities. Eventually, I no longer had the capacity to keep my full-time job and continue to paint without doing a disservice to my teams at work. It’s one of the scariest things I’ve done, but I ended up quitting without a solid plan—all I knew was that I wanted to focus on painting. I’m grateful I had enough trust in myself to figure out how to make it work as a steady source of income.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
There’s no doubt that the pandemic forced a lot of us to look inward. I can only speak for myself, but living in the epicenter of COVID-19 forced me to do a reanalysis of my life. Between the time when I quit my career to the few years leading up to lockdown, I was living my life by means of filling my heart instead of my wallet. I had saved up money before quitting my career, so I had the privilege to only pursue projects that creatively aligned with my compass. But when everything shut down, everything went quiet. The majority of my clients are places you share air with strangers—cafes, bars, co-working spaces, etc. I thought I would never paint an inside mural ever again—it was heartbreaking and terrifying. I realized I needed to make another career pivot and turned to my past career as a Creative Director. As much as I didn’t want to go back into the advertising industry, I ended up freelancing to stay afloat and serendipitously landed a job as Creative Director at Meow Wolf. I look at my life now and am so thankful that I figured out a way to combine my past career with my current career as an artist. I have so much fun at Meow Wolf but am also very grateful that I work at a place that not only allows me to continue my business as a muralist, they celebrate it.
Contact Info:
- Website: lamkat.com
- Instagram: @lamkat
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lamkat/