Meet the Artist
Artist Statement
I'm a landscape lover pulling inspiration from my favorite vacation destinations for my creative choices; translating the beauty and atmospheric feeling of these places into marks, color, and texture that often result in dramatic shapes, gestural lines, and visual tension.
Most of my travels take me to two regions that couldn’t be more opposite: the SoCal desert and the Hawaiian tropics. Aside from their differences, they have one alluring thing in common: time has a way of standing still and you find yourself getting lost in your surroundings.
Though I use reference photos that I’ve taken from my travels for inspiration in the studio, I don't always focus on creating a loose rendition of a photo. Often, I will instead deconstruct the image in a very abstract way and infuse my work with the feeling or ‘mood’ of these places.
Artist Bio
Kristen Guest is an award-winning and published full-time artist and art instructor in San Diego, California. She graduated from art school at Middle Tennessee State University with a degree in Art Education, that focused on painting, book arts and printmaking, and has been teaching realism painting since 2004 and abstract painting since 2018. Kristen currently works in three mediums: acrylic, oil, and pencil.
Kristen lives in North Poway near Rancho Bernardo and Escondido, where she works out of her home studio and shares Studio 6 at Art on 30th, an art center in the North Park district of San Diego, where she showcases and sells her work locally. Art on 30th is also where she is a Mentoring Artist and the Director of Education. Kristen recently became a Teaching Artist for R&F Paints and shares her love and knowledge of their Pigment Stick product line.
Her work is currently represented through Ashton Gallery in San Diego CA and Janssen Artspace in Palm Springs CA, and has been on exhibit with Sandstone Gallery in Laguna Beach CA, Borrego Art Institute in Borrego Springs CA, The Athenaeum Arts & Music Library in La Jolla CA, Huntington Beach Art Center in Huntington Beach CA, Port Angeles Fine Arts Center in Port Angeles WA, Woman Made Gallery in Chicago, IL, Jen Tough Gallery on Artsy, and Saatchi's The Other Art Fair Online Studios Los Angeles.