Today we’d like to introduce you to Kearin Ever.
Kearin, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
My professional career as an illustrator began in Brooklyn, where I graduated from the Communications Design program at Pratt Institute in 2018. I have chosen a freelance career as my weapon to wield in a lifelong battle against routine and conformity. As an illustrator, I keep myself open to all kinds of projects. Monotony is the enemy of creativity and my very personal nemesis. In my exploration of all the applications of my artistic ability, I have worked in storyboarding, editorial illustration, graphic design, album cover artwork and design, and, most recently, mural painting. I began painting murals in NYC in 2019. In that year, I lugged my paint cans and rollers through the subway system from Brooklyn to a sports bar on the Upper West Side, onto an Indian restaurant in East Harlem, then to an office building in Chelsea.
I saw a future for myself in New York, painting murals, attending weekly figure drawing nights at Bat Haus, and enjoying peaceful, solitary lunches at North Dumpling for years to come, but 2020 had different plans for me. After months of denying what was happening to the lovely, lively city of my childhood dreams, I couldn’t avoid it anymore. Life in New York City was far from ideal, and the pandemic only sped up the process of realization for me. I moved back to Houston, my hometown, in June and never looked back. I have continued tirelessly to paint and work and create and build my portfolio here.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The most difficult aspect of my career, in the beginning, was also what made it possible. Taking advice from an illustration professor at Pratt, I held off on finding full-time work so I could focus my energy on what I really wanted to do. I spent the summer after graduation drawing, building my portfolio, painting commissioned pet portraits and eating a whole lot of canned black beans. It was extremely lonely and seemed endless, but after a few months, my work began to get noticed and job requests started coming in. There were some incredible projects I would not have had the opportunity to work on at all if I already had a full-time obligation.
We’d love to hear more about your art.
I am an illustrator with tons of experience creating music-related artwork such as album cover designs, posters and merch design. One of the most exciting projects I have had the opportunity to work on had me creating stage projection visuals for the 2019 tour of the Grammy Award-winning band Mastodon. I love creating artwork for musicians and plan to continue doing so while also starting to move in the direction of murals and other large scale paintings.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
When I was very young, maybe six or seven, my grandfather would call me up to his office each day to look at the images sent back from the Hubble Telescope. He would carefully explain each of the phenomena we saw so I could begin to develop an understanding of the universe beyond our own world. It was a routine we had for years. He recognized my love for the natural world at a very young age and took every opportunity to encourage it.
Contact Info:
- Website: kearincook.com
- Email: kearinevercook@gmail.com
- Instagram: @kearinever
- Other: behance.net/kearincook
Image Credit:
Garrett Herzik
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