Current Artists Archives

North Loop: Grace Preston

Grace is an Austin-based artist and illustrator. She’d like to believe she makes optimistic and playful work with a subtle sense of humor. She grew up spending nearly all of her time drawing and the rest of it hogging the landline internet connection to fuss over her Neopets, and she is pretty much the same person today (although she traded up for an actual cat). Her biggest inspirations are nature and the outdoors, animals both real and imagined, literature and pop culture.

Website ~ Instagram

Village: Sarala Kasbe

Sarala Kasbe was born in Sydney, Australia and grew up in Raleigh, NC where she spent her formative years. In 2015, after receiving her B.A. in Communication at Meredith College, she moved to Boston, MA for a job in marketing. The pandemic in 2020 sent a shock wave through her world. The ground beneath her shifted and for the first time in her life, she asked what was important to her based on goals and passions she was prescribing entirely herself. Through this, she decided to change the way she lived by abandoning the plan laid ahead of her by others and instead, pivoting towards a road with no map, guided purely by her instinct and curiosity. Sarala now resides in Austin, TX as a painter and creator. As an emerging abstract painter seeking connection with herself, Sarala finds her work registering on an emotional level. Through painting, she’s begun to find a sense of purpose and self-compassion. Paint is the one constant she holds onto to keep moving forward and connect with external surroundings. It’s an emotional and impactful experience; she doesn’t paint daily and she doesn’t paint to pass the time — when she does engage with it, she pour hours into it, diving into a meditation that she can surface from stripped and laid bare. She finds herself in the studio when she needs to express something inside that cannot be successfully communicated in any other way. This form of creation has saved Sarala in every way. The world is a heavy and scary place to experience alone. She hopes to impact others to find their own voice through the darkness. Love and light will be on the other end, sometimes walls of anxiety and depression have to be torn down first to get there. Her message is to speak truth through frustration and to act with no rules or boundaries to fully find oneself.

Email: saralakasbe@gmail.com
Website ~ Instagram

Far West: Courtney Andrada

“My name is Courtney and I’ve lived in Austin for over 11 years now. I was fortunate enough to grow up in a home that valued art and encouraged my love for photography. Throughout the years, I’ve always tried to make time to grow as an artist, but it was during the pandemic that photography really started to become important to me. As someone who has struggled with anxiety and depression, going outside and capturing the world around me, became a sort of therapy during a chaotic time. Whenever I was feeling low in life, I could look back on the art I created, feel inspired, and back out outside and create something new. I’m proud to look back on my work and excited to see what the future holds and to continue to grow as an artist and human.”

Instagram ~ Email: cja89007@gmail.com