About Me

 

I have been making art for as long as I can remember. I remember making portraits of my cats with crayons on construction paper when I was five years old.

At the age of seven, when I began getting frustrated by the lack of realism in my art, my mom (also a fine artist) began helping me transition away from child-like doodling and I began practicing to draw what my eyes were seeing. By the time I was 10 years old, I  drew well over 1,000 horses.

One of my proudest memories was being “commissioned” when I was in 5th grade to create the Holiday Mural for the Christmas play–Getting to skip math lessons for a whole week was an incredible feeling!

In my 20s, I began experimenting with watercolors, and that, along with oil paints, became my media of choice for the next 15 years. I started to believe that I could make a career as an artist when I began getting commissioned to make children and pet portraits.

I recently began to “make friends” with acrylics in the last few years and am happy with the results, especially since I used to find acrylic paints to be too plastic-like and difficult to blend.

I feel like I have a bit of a split personality as an artist; I have my fine art side, which I consider to be my “real” art, but I also have a more playful and experimental side in which I like to just make fun and pretty things.

I enjoy teaching others how to how to paint as well;  I capture my process of creating these smaller projects on video and describe the step-by-step processes involved. You can see me in action at www.createwithaura.com.

I have lived in Montana, California, and Washington, and have been artistically influenced by each change in landscape. I currently live in Wisconsin with my husband, Greg, and our two young children, Aela and Danny.

Please contact me at inquiry@artbyaura.com