Texan biologist and illustrator Erin Curry has been selected as the featured artist for the Fall Cottonwood Art Festival in Richardson on Oct. 7-8. Curry graduated with a B.S. in Biology and was working at the Dallas Zoo when she began drawing at the age of 26.

“People always asked me to draw their dog or cat and I really liked animals so I started putting them in my own style,” she said. “I figured out pretty quickly that this is what I was supposed to be doing because it became easy for me to want to push myself and think how to make it better and become better as an artist.”

The self-taught artist started off with black and white ink drawings and then introduced color.

“I learned through trial and error that you can blend colored pencils like paint and how to blend and shade,” Curry said.

The initial use of single flat paper evolved into intricate layers of mixed media that transformed a subject into a story. Curry relies heavily on mythology, Hispanic culture, Japanese gods, children’s tales and taxidermy. Read on…