Cara Young was born in Lawrenceville, Georgia and grew up in the Atlanta, Georgia area. Not until her junior year of high school would she surprisingly decide to consider a career in the field of drawing and painting. In pursuit of finding her voice and style, Cara drastically immersed herself within the world of art and began developing a rough form of mixed media painting. Her pieces placed in regional and statewide competitions in the U.S. (incl. Scholastic, Georgia Governors Honors Program, and Georgia Watercolor Society) before continuing her education at Kennesaw State University. She recieved her BFA in 2018, concentrating in Drawing and Painting, minoring in French and Francophone Studies. Her present artwork is centered on the racial issues within the American society and the beauty and varience of culture in this world. Her subject matter includes studies of the human figure within collage-based hand-crafted environments. The artist is particularly fond of using mixed media, saturated color, and working large scale. She is regionally known as a GHP State Finalist in Visual Arts, and received Honorable Mentions and scholarship by the Georgia Watercolor Society in 2012. She was also an exhibiting artist in the Race Forward Facing Race Conference in Fall 2016 at the Hilton Atlanta, and is continually showing work within the Atlanta, Marietta, and Kennesaw area.
ARTIST STATEMENT
When I turned 17 years old, I began drawing and painting; thus, in coming of age I was inspired by change and intrigued by the thought of putting different media together to create something cohesive and wonderful. Something that represented the center of who I am: a never-ending transformation. I immensely enjoy using mixed-media and combining both drawing and painting techniques to create new forms of art. In my experience, this is the easiest way to express the complexities of both my being and of this world. My typical subject matter is centered around light, texture, and particular renderings of the human figure to express different internal conflict, emotion, and social displacement. I hope that my art will express the emotions that I feel when I create, along with the instinctual desires that we all feel as we move through life, connect with each other, and strive to find a place in this world.
Cara Marie Young. 2018.