Charissa Owens, a native of Alexandria, LA, grew up in a large, close knit family spending a lot of time outside as she always loved nature. Always being fascinated by art, she consistently worked with her hands and created! This began in elementary school when her uncle, an architect, gave an art lesson to her class and then continued to share his love of drawing and art with her. She studied art in high school and cultivated it further in college, ultimately earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design. Upon graduation, she worked as a Graphic Designer for 4 years, Charissa then pursued her other passion of teaching children (for the past 17 years) and shares life with her husband and their three kids. As an educator, Charissa prioritized making school fun for her students and kept her love of art alive by incorporating it into her daily routine of teaching reading and math. While taking a year off from teaching, she worked as the graphic designer and social media manager for a start-up clothing company. This experience reawakened more of her creative side and she desired to continue on this artistic journey. Charissa returned to teaching and was able to combine her love of art by now serving as a Talented Visual Arts educator for her school system and teaching summer art camp at the Alexandria Museum of Art. She is passionately focused on growing the love of art for our next generation of artists. In between working her full-time job and being a mother to three, she finds time to paint in the evenings and on the weekends in her home studio. Charissa began her art career by hand painting pillows with nature scenes and has been creating commissioned abstract, watercolor and multimedia pieces. Her artwork is inspired by a soft color palette and infused with multi-layer texturing. Her love for Art History, textiles, and fashion gives some influence, but her main inspiration comes from her past years as a graphic designer and a love of texture. She often sees composition and patterns on objects in the world around her that lead to the pieces she creates. She loves the continuously evolving process of multimedia layering by using a variety of unexpected tools and creating slight hints of the underpainting that peep out from the piece. Most recently, she had a piece that was featured in the PAUSE exhibit at the Alexandria Museum of Art. To see more of my art, you can find me on Facebook and Instagram at @charissaowensart.