Meet Kate McHugh

We were lucky to catch up with Kate McHugh recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Kate, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?
I think starting out it can be easy to compare yourself to artists you look up to and end up feeling disappointed with yourself. When you continue to make the things you want to see exist, and get over that pressure to be perfect right away, you start to develop your own style and can only judge yourself on your own work. I try to pursue the ideas I keep thinking about and if they go wrong just learn from it and make something better the next time.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
Kate McHugh is a visual artist specializing in narrative and editorial illustration. She received her BFA studying Illustration at the School of Visual Arts in 2020, and her work has been featured in print publications, murals, promotional material and more. ​
Her work focuses on narratives of childlike wonder that have a dark underlying charm to them, suggesting story telling clues with motif and a keen eye for detail.
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Capturing personality and character through visual elements is what she enjoys most about creating her work.

In 2024 she hopes to create a new body of work that explores portrait through personal belongings, and how much they represent our personal worlds.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
I think accepting that practice makes perfect and not giving up when you’re frustrated is the best thing you can do for your work. Building your own style by making collections of things you love – colors, compositions, themes, etc can help you develop your voice and be closer to yourself, and the more you do it the more defined it will become. Seeing the world as a scavenger and picking out things that define you can inform your work so much more than trying to be someone else. Art can be influenced by anything you find interesting.

Awesome, really appreciate you opening up with us today and before we close maybe you can share a book recommendation with us. Has there been a book that’s been impactful in your growth and development?
I think an important part of my work is sentimentality, and discovering authors who can take one memory and explore all of the little details that make it a tender experience helped me realize that’s what I love to imbue my artwork with.

Thinking of authors like Proust who can take one small memory and examine all of the scenery and feelings that accompany it, or magical realism authors like Bulgakov who take something insignificant and bring out a magical quality helps me view day to day experiences as a whole made up of magical little moments that are overlooked.

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