Cathy Carey

Cathy Carey was born in Washington, DC. and grew up in Alexandria, VA. She was educated at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington DC, and received a BFA in Painting and Printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. Several years later Carey moved to Southern California and continued painting, and started a business in graphic design and illustration. She works in all media’s including Photoshop to create images. She currently maintains a studio and teaches workshops in San Diego, CA and Santa Fe, NM., and has taught at the Art Institute of CA in San Diego. The award winning paintings of Cathy Carey are in many private collections world wide.

When I was 10, I was in a car accident that crushed the right side of my face. For a time it left me unable to fully see, eat, breathe easily or walk. I had plastic surgery for many years to put the pieces back together and save my sight. Back then, there was no such thing as a Traumatic Brain Injury, but that is what I had. It has affected me from then on by changing the way my brain thinks. I was so young it's hard to say exactly what that change was, I was always creative and loved color, but as an adult I have come to realize that I experience color differently than other people. I understand color as a feeling and I can describe it in words and in art in ways that other people can understand and feel. In my paintings I use color as vocabulary words to describe the emotion of how I want my viewers to experience my artwork. I want them to feel joy. To feel uplifted, or grounded, or settled, to feel like they are not alone, that a friend is standing by in the darkest hour. Because that is what I remember from the accident. I have total amnesia and don't remember any of what happened. But I do remember being taken away from a frightening scene and comforted by three spirits. There is no telling what a horribly damaged brain is going to make up to manage the pain and unreality of an experience like that. Today I am grateful to the doctors, for time to heal and to turn the memory into something I can share with others.

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