Nothing is ever completely black or white.

We operate in a gray zone.

It's that acceptance of how we can coexist with each other and figure out what's best for the world.

Hi, my name is Barb Schwarz Karst, and I'm a professional painter, and I live in Missoula, Montana.

Barb Schwarz Karst, originally trained as a photo realist, but now works mostly in abstract and mixed media artwork.

I don't make pretty art.

I just don't.

I want art that actually has some meaning or some tooth behind it.

Barb is best known for her Shifting Winds, Stark Unreality, Crucibles, and Montana Rust Belt collections.

This is my Crucibles series, so these are all people that have influenced me, either with their music or with their art.

So you see, Tom Petty, you see, this Kurt Cobain and I call this In the Pines.

This is actually chrome and aluminum that was in a fire and it melted off of old junk automobiles, and then it pooled into the dirt and made these abstract shapes.

So this is part of the Shifting Wind series.

And this one's called Baptism by Fire.

And it, I don't know if you can see it, but it's highly, highly textured.

And then the underpainting I did in a lot of really hot oranges and reds.

I'm trying to pay a lot of respect to indigenous peoples.

Even as a kid, I wanted to do art.

I think because I grew up fairly poor and we didn't have a lot of materials to work with.

So I always, I remember distinctly making my own paints.

My mother always was encouraging me to go into art but I, I didn't know whether I wanted to or not because I was a little afraid of not being able to make a living from it.

When Barb was in college, she started out as an elementary education major, but during her third year of school, she took a few art classes.

That changed everything.

One of my professors pulled me in and had me speak to the department chair.

He saw my work and said, you should transfer and you should become an artist.

After college, Barb taught high school art for 25 years, which gave her the flexibility to continue working on her own art.

It was a good profession for me.

I was always able to do my art, even when I was teaching, and I've always had a love for it.

Even as a kid, I just loved art.

I have this entire painting covered and I only paint that one section at a time.

I came up with that.

It's called a blind grid, so I do the underpainting and then I use pencil and I grid the entire piece, like with these shapes.

What happens is when you unveil it, things won't quite match up.

You're going to see kind of edges that don't completely match up, because I can't see what's in the adjacent piece, and it kind of gives it a weird tension and almost movement.

From 2003 to 2004.

Barb received a fellowship to study with TICA, or Teacher's Institute of Contemporary Art through The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

It was a complete switch for me.

That's when I started leaning more into, I'm going to do abstract art.

I mean, I love this, this is freeing for me.

And and so I've seen it, you know, change over the years.

But that was a big pivotal, you know, point for me.

Barb's piece “Warrior” won an award in New York at the National Society of Painters in Casein and Acrylic.

Im pretty honored.

I mean, I've had lots of people buy my artwork, and every time they do it, it makes me happy.

I also did a painting of Gary Clark Junior, who's like one of my favorite musicians of all time, and, and was actually able to, meet him and, and, I gave him the piece of he owns it now personally, that stands out in my mind.

Barb has one piece of advice for aspiring artists.

Follow your bliss.

And not to blow it off and think I'm not good enough.

I would never be able to do that.

I could never paint as well as this person, or I could never sing as well as this person to just do that, because it's so inspiring and and just, I think it really grounds people.

You're never too old.

You just, you know, you need to follow your bliss no matter what and share that with other people.

See, you're the artist at work now.