Painter of Native Plants
San Diego, California
www.krisdeyoung.com
858-268-8642
kdy@san.rr.com
Southern California native Kris deYoung, has been a practicing artist since receiving her BA in Visual Arts rom UC San Diego in the 1970's, where she had two one-woman shows and several group showings. She has received numerous awards, led a series of Art Happenings, and taught art classes for teenagers and adults. While at UCSD, her master painting teacher was Manny Farber, plus she received a UCSD Chancellor's Scholarship for graduate studies in visual arts. (During that time she painted under the name of Kris Michel.)
She has studied native edible and useful plants since building a cabin in northern California. While in Oregon she designed for the theater, and recently volunteered as a parabotonist for the San Diego Natural History Museum. Love of plant and flower
She continues her art studies by taking art classes through Mesa College, the Athenaeum, the Art Department and La Jolla Art Association. She is a member of the Spanish Village Art Center and the La Jolla Art Association, where she serves as their current president. She has also held memberships and been selected for juried shows Museum of the Living Artist. She has artworks regularly selected for exhibit at the San Diego County Fair, exhibition in Balboa Park, has permanent wall murals on display at Mid-City College in San Diego, oils and watercolors in the Historic Hawaiian Home on Coronado, and artwork in private collections in Europe, Asia, Mexico and Canada.
In 2005 she began her "Native Plant Series" oil paintings with 100 richly painted textural canvases of the world's native plants and their habitats. The juxtaposition of hard edge elements beside the plant image, asks the viewer to consider how human activity intrudes into the beauty and serenity of the natural nvironment. Each painting begins with a walk or a hike in the surrounding countryside. She captures the native plant images with a Sony digital camera, manipulates the images on her computer with Adobe Photoshop, creates a print and uses that as subject matter for the final oil or mixed media canvas. She paints in oil, watercolor and also experiments with mixed