Carolyn Whittico
Carolyn Whittico’s illustrations are about inner and external places. Sometimes discovery is made of traveling or sight-seeing, and sometimes discovery comes from the perspective of your mind and heart.
Inner discovery is so captivating because it’s inherently personal and unavoidably private. Even if you want to share your feelings, thoughts, and dreams — it’s difficult to express and receive. Take telling someone about a nightmare you had: you can recount the story, but what they picture in their mind will never be identical to your experience of the nightmare. The inescapably personal and private nature of inner spaces of the mind show through Whittico’s illustrations.
External discovery is interesting for the opposite reason. Places and settings can be experienced together. You can see the same thing at the same time as another person. Memories are made in unison. The connection through outer experiences, traveling, and sight-seeing is unmatched. For that reason you’ll see many specific and real places shown in Whittico’s work, as well as imaginary settings.
Carolyn Whittico’s work reflects the youth we must return to within ourselves in order to spark our love of discovery. Her illustrations welcome viewers to dive into the seldom-reached feelings of nostalgia and gloom, and find a mental plane of comfort in sorrow. Exploration of the self is not always a happy journey and that’s okay.
She creates a distinct style by layering individual coats of watercolor paint atop one another and adding layered details with digital paint. Cool colors, little windows, and ghosts of the imagination invoke an inner feeling of wonder. We are all children somewhere, discovering things in life for the first time.
Carolyn Whittico is a Metro Detroit native currently working from a traveling RV somewhere in the US. She specializes in mixed media illustration using watercolor and digital paint. Whittico is a self-taught artist and has been experimenting since youth. Her artwork has been published in the Lyceum Literary Arts Journal, featured in BuzzFeed, shown in exhibits and murals all over the Midwest, and clientele purchase her work from every corner of the United States. She is the founder of A Cup of Cloudy, a shop and online resource for working artists.
Shop for prints, notebooks, coffee mugs, pins, and more at:
https://acupofcloudy.com/shop/
