Meet Katrina Flores And Hudson Parkinson of Black Rabbit Studios

Today we’d like to introduce you to Katrina Flores And Hudson Parkinson

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
In our youth, both Hudson and I found much comfort and joy in the world of art. Always being drawn to whimsical, fantastical genres and the mysterious unknown, art became a way for us to express our inner creativity and the inventions of our imaginations. We both pursued the continuation of our artistic skills with extra-curricular art classes, art competitions, and personal work. As we grew, our inner fire for the arts only continued to grow with us and we knew that we both desired to keep creating art through our lifetimes.

Hudson and I met in 2010 and have been together since. We were married in 2012 and attended Salt Lake Community College together where Hudson Studied traditional art and 3D animation while I studied illustration and graphic design. We explored many different mediums while in school and developed our skills as much as we could before graduating. During our educational endeavours, Hudson gravitated towards digital art while I was drawn to oil painting.

We became very involved with our local arts community in 2019 and towards the end of the year, I became the president of the Tooele County Arts Guild, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the arts in our community. With my board of directors, we were able to create four murals in downtown Tooele, host multiple art shows, offer monthly artistic educational opportunities, and start a new annual Renaissance Faire which will be in its fourth year this September. I passed the torch as president of the arts guild in 2023 and now serve as the event coordinator for the Tooele Ren Faire. Hudson and I enjoy serving our community artistically. We have also had the opportunity to serve the community of Salt Lake City recently by completing a large mural on State Street depicting Ethiopian culture.

Throughout the years, we have continued to explore different creative outlets. In addition to his digital painting work, Hudson has also written four science fiction/fantasy novels and short stories which we are in the process of publishing. He uses his stories to inspire his artwork and has created an extensive portfolio of illustrations, which he has used to develop his own tarot deck, and art prints. I have spent my time as an artist working mostly with oil paint. I am very inspired by Renaissance art and specialize in portrait painting. Both Hudson and I use our work to express magical themes and stories. We still today use fantasy and science fiction to inspire our work.

In addition to our freelance work, we have put forth a large amount of time and energy into establishing our little business in the community teaching art classes. On top of traditional artwork, I have branched out into the world of ceramics and we have been teaching pottery classes for the past year. Working with clay has been another way for me to express myself in a completely new and 3 dimensional way. And it turns out that many people are interested in learning the art of ceramics and other art mediums in our community as well. We teach a variety of classes such as drawing, oil painting, digital art, and pottery in our little home studio in Stansbury Park. It has been quite an adventure making these connections with our students and the community.

We have a seven year old daughter who we have the pleasure of raising. It has been a joy to see her gravitate towards the arts as her interests have developed. We always joke that she never had a chance being raised by two artist parents like us. We believe in running a creative household full of books, antiques, history, music, and all the art supplies a child could want. Although our lives as artists are sometimes (most of the time!) chaotic, we wouldn’t change the artful path that we have walked together.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
As fulfilling as it may be, navigating life in the art world is never an easy task. There are many hurdles, pitfalls, and fiery hoops that constantly pop up in your path no matter how prepared you think you may be as an artist. Trying to make money as an artist is a mammoth task with trying to earn what your work is worth while continuously trying to produce new things. Trying to stand out as an artist in a very competitive field is also no simple thing.

There is one challenge in particular that took a lot of joy out of our experience as artists for some time. There was a period of time when we were attending many festivals and markets trying to sell our work. As we rode the wave of being vendors we started to notice what kind of things sold and what didn’t. In turn, it resulted in us changing our artwork styles or subject matter to cater to what we thought people would buy. But by sacrificing our artistic individuality we no longer felt the same joy we used to feel from art. The joy that made us feel whole. It felt like selling our artistic souls to the devil of consumerism! It was not what we were meant to do as artists! Although it is what we and most other professional artists strive for, being artists means so much more to us than just making a profit. It is a part of our essence, our souls, and our minds. It is an extension of who we truly are and we can’t cover up our true artistic passions even if they don’t appeal to everyone. We stopped vending at events and returned to creating art that fed our passions and instead worked on finding clients and customers that are drawn to our styles. Artists don’t always get to choose their artistic pathways. More often than not, the art chooses you to be its advocate to bring it forth into the world. By trying to cover it up, you smother the flame that gave you desires to create in the first place.

We now mostly sell our work online in the form of art prints and take on commissions from clients who are drawn to our styles and science fiction/fantasy genre. It gives us the chance to earn profits from our work without sacrificing our artistic individuality.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Our art studio, as small and humble as it may be, is bursting at the seams with creative passion. Shortly after we moved into our little home in 2014, we quickly realized that we really needed a studio space much more than we needed a garage. So in the following year’s we slowly converted our tiny one car garage into a full functioning art studio. As we replaced the garage door with french doors, painted the concrete floors, installed a sink, shelving and replaced a few walls, and got creative with the small space, it truly turned into our most beloved room in the home. As unimpressive as it may sound, our little 300 Sq ft studio has become quite a sanctuary for us and our students. The studio easily accommodates work tables, six pottery wheels, our ceramic kiln, easels, shelving, and all of the things you would expect to see in an art studio. The walls are covered in artwork, the shelves full of books and pottery pieces, and the easels full of works in progress. We have such luck to also have a lovely view of our mountains from our glass doors. Although you might expect such a small studio to be inconvenient, our cozy home studio actually seems to set us apart from larger studios. Smaller class sizes mean we get to give each of our students more one on one time to help them learn. Students also get the chance to socialize with each other more personally and make connections. Our classes are always filled with conversation and music. We feel like we really get the opportunity to get to know our students and make lifelong connections with them. We take pride in offering a friendly, pressure free atmosphere for students to learn and grow artistically. We really want our students to have a good time when they are in our studio.

We offer a variety of different art courses such as drawing, oil painting, digital painting, wheel throwing pottery, and hand building ceramics. Classes are available for kids, ages 6+, teens, and adults! Students can register for classes on our website BlackRabbitStudios.net as well as shop our selection of art prints and original art pieces for sell. We offer classes year round.

What quality or characteristic do you feel is most important to your success?
We have offered our services in illustration and graphic design over the years. Although Hudson and I work with very different mediums, we still find ways to collaborate on projects with our different skill sets. Often, with design commissions or illustrations, I will take pencil or paint to canvas to lay the groundwork for a project before handing it off to Hudson for digitization and coloring. We enjoy finding ways to fuze our different ways of creating art. Having the ability to work with multiple different mediums gives us the ability to offer many different options to our clients. We have more flexibility being able to use both traditional and digital art forms when needed.

Although, illustration is our favorite kind of work to produce ( portraits, illustrations, concept art, etc.) we also pride ourselves on being well rounded in graphic design so we can offer logos, posters, advertisements, and other digital elements to our clients. It comes in useful to ourselves and our clients to be a quality one stop shop art and design resource.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.blackrabbitstudios.net/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blackrabbitartstudio/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BlackRabbitArtStudio