We had the good fortune of connecting with Kathleen McGuinness and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Kathleen, what was your thought process behind starting your own business?
I’ve always sketched and painted during daily breaks at Peets in Pasadena. People started asking if they could commission me to do a watercolor of a pet or family member. Next I put the paintings up on https://mcgraphics.us/art with prices. Next it was social media getting the word out on facebook, instagram, twitter, and linkedin.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
Being a watercolor portrait artist what is really important is my connection with the client. I get them to tell me stories about their pet or family member. I do a lot of animal watercolors. Painting a beloved pet is a spiritual process. I swear I often feel little paws guiding my brush. As a digital portrait illustrator I am continually learning about history. My paintings, usually caricatures are of figures like Voltaire, Issac Newton, Catherine the Great, Genghis Khan, and Attila the Hun. For each digital illustration I use a Wacom Tablet with Corel Painter, Photoshop, Affinity Photo, and Affinity Designer. And this summer I started https://www.funkyhistory.com to showcase my work, give context to the people and provide history timelines.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Here are 3 of my favorites places to visit. 1. Skirball Museum Museum galleries, Noah’s Ark, and more when the Skirball reopens to the general public in 2021 www.skirball.org 2. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens https://www.huntington.org 3, Echo Mountain and Ruins of Mt. Lowe Railway https://californiathroughmylens.com/echo-mountain-hike Not for beginners hike but totally worth it to get to the top and see the ruins of the Mt. Lowe Railway The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
When our graphic design contract with Kaiser Permanente expired after 15 years my partner Vladimir Pavlov pointed out that I’d always wanted to be an artist. He said, “Go for it,” and I did. During a Whole Foods lunch my brother Charles McGuinness said there were web sites that would use my digital images on t-shirts and pay me a royalty. At the time I was painting portraits of musicians from the 1950s thru the 1970s https://mcgraphics.us/music. I ended up on Amazon.com with my 2BTshirts shop selling in the UK, Germany, France, Spain, and Italy. In the U.S. at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=2btshirts+tshirts&ref=nb_sb_noss

Website: https://mcgraphics.us/art https://funkyhistory.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kat12n/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katmc/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/kathmc
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/katmc1/
Other: https://mcgraphics.us https://mcgraphics.us/music

Image Credits
Kathleen McGuinness

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