Kristy Hawkes is an artist based in Utah, right under the beautiful Wasatch Mountains. She was born and raised in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, so awesome scenery has been a source of inspiration her whole life. As a child, she would draw on anything that would stand still. A new pack of markers any day of the week was as good as Christmas morning. She and her husband had one baby, then two, then two more at the same time in less than 4 years. Art quickly took a backseat to baby raising. Now the kids are grown and the easel is back up and all she does is paint, talk about painting, and think about painting. It's an obsession and she loves it. Kristy’s mission as an artist is to go beyond the traditional and the obvious and celebrate the beauty found in unusual places, like underwater! She has always been drawn to water and several recent trips to Lake Tahoe, California are what inspire her work. Nearby, Fallen Leaf Lake and closer to home, Bear Lake, Utah are also clear water lakes that influence her current work. She has won multiple awards in local competitions and some online exhibits as well. Her passion is finding scenes from underwater, half-way under, or surface water and bringing them to life on canvas. The way light fractures through the water is important to her work, changing details and creating oddities we don’t expect but can appreciate. Though she loves to paint water, she also takes side journeys into other subjects just to see what will happen.