Katie Conley

Artist Katie Conley captures moments of beauty and joy. She spends most days covered in oil paint, but she also loves collage, mosaic, and almost all forms of art. For as long as she can remember, she’s lost herself in art. She followed her passion in college, studying Studio Art at Indiana University. After graduating, she maintained her artistic exploration while working every remotely creative job imaginable to support her art—retail displays, school photography, even working on live TV for the Home Shopping Network. She earned her master’s degree from the University of Louisville in art education and began teaching art. She gave up teaching to take care of her babies, and now she has returned to daily art-making.

Katie lives in Austin with her husband and their children. Together they’ve traveled both domestically and internationally, and those travels are often featured in Katie’s art. Now that the boys are in school, she is thrilled to be able to paint and create full time.

ABOUT THE ART

Katie’s childhood neighbor had postage stamp art on display in their home. Katie’s mom always loved that art! So Katie & her family decided to surprise her mom with some of her own, but alas upon inquiry, the artist, an elderly woman had already passed away. Katie decided she would make the postage stamp art for her mom instead! Her mom loved it! And Katie loved making it and so began making it for her mom for each holiday and birthday that followed. Pretty soon others started requesting their own postage stamp art! Katie has been making art out of postage stamps ever since! Many of her ideas come to her from inspiration found in her other artwork (paintings & mosaics) as well as what interests her in her daily life. She loves doing commissions and is thrilled to create a collage for someone that is meaningful to them. She begins each piece with a google search for images that represent the topic she has chosen. Then makes a template to trace and then works the stamps into the space on the paper within the borders of the design. She tries to use stamps that relate when possible (for states, she uses only stamps from that state, for the yoga poses the stamps are all from India). Katie rarely has to buy stamps. Many friends and family members have passed along their old stamp collections to her, not knowing what else to do with them. Katie comes across many unique and interesting stamps in her work and would swear some of them have to be worth a lot of money, but when she searches she sees that even the oldest, and rarest are worth only a couple dollars, so she doesn’t feel guilty cutting them up to make her art. She does however have a small stash of the stamps that are so neat she cant bring herself to cut them. Katie uses mainly cancelled (used) and old stamps.

MORE ABOUT KATIE

To see more of Katie’s work you can:

check out her artist website: www.katieconleycreative.com

on facebook: www.facebook.com/katieconleycreative

on instagram: katieconley