By Jan Wiezorek

As Elkhart artist Kamika Perry dreams big, she models for others how art can make dreams come true.

Kamika Perry was exhibiting her paintings for the first time. “I enjoyed being a fly in the room, watching how people react,” she says. But one visitor, a girl under age 10, made comments that still resonate with Perry today. “She said the artwork made her feel beautiful,” Perry recalls, “and she said she wanted to be like me.”

The child added that she would love to be an artist, and her parents said she always enjoys painting. At the art show, the girl was reacting favorably to Perry’s abstract work featuring portraits of women of color accented in gold leaf.

Since that solo exhibition in May 2023 at the St. Joseph County Public Library in South Bend, Perry has come to realize that, as a semi-professional and emerging artist, she can inspire others and enable them to dream through her paintings.

“A lot of my childhood impressions were that art is just a hobby,” Perry says. “I never allowed myself to dream, but it’s a win for me to share my work and to encourage others.” Perry adds that “If people fail you when you’re young and impressionable, that could dampen your dreams.”

She says it was important for her to see this child dreaming of becoming an artist. It was a “big deal for me” to meet her because Perry discovered for the first time that she could model how to make an artist’s life a potential goal for girls, women, and persons of color in her own community.

Perry believes it is becoming somewhat easier for women of color to find a place for themselves in art. For example, Perry says she was the first artist to show her work at the St. Joseph County Public Library’s new exhibition space, where she will exhibit again June 13 to July 11, 2024.

Also, Perry says she was inspired when the Art Institute of Chicago, in 2020 and 2021, exhibited portraits by African-American female artist Bisa Butler. She adds, “To see that was encouraging.”

Perry believes that, for an artist, life should be enjoyed, and she plans to continue painting as one way to understand her world. Some barriers, she says, such as racism, occur when individuals see others as “different” and may feel “uncomfortable” around them. But, she says, “I’m going to paint anyway because the world is a big place.”

Still, Perry believes part of her initial hesitancy to dream big as an artist stems from her own shyness—and an encounter she had with a college adviser and art teacher, an African-American woman, who dissuaded her from pursuing an art career. Perry says the adviser told her art isn’t “a field occupied by accomplished women . . . [or] Black females. I felt it wasn’t her place to discourage,” Perry adds. “She should have inspired me and opened doors, and that’s what I said to her.”

Brushing off the slight, Perry transferred from that unnamed college to Ivy Tech Community College in South Bend. She ultimately graduated, in 2012, from Indiana University South Bend, with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Graphic Design and Media.

Perry, 36, who emigrated from Jamaica when she was 10, has “been drawing for as long as I can remember.”

But in 2020, she says, she began taking her art “more seriously. I never painted publicly, but the transition wasn’t a hard one.” Perry says she began by painting about three canvases a year for family and friends, and she stored her artworks in the garage.

Next, she decided to launch her own business, K P Art Studio, and her website for art sales in 2020. But it was also a time of sadness for the artist, whose father, Milton Guthrie, died during the pandemic. “I realized that life is short,” she says. So, with encouragement from husband Tavarus Perry—and inspiration from her mother, Lorna Guthrie, she ignited her passion for painting and took her “quiet dream” to the forefront of her life by promoting her artwork at kamikaperry.com.

Today, in her art collection Freedom, Golden, and 2024, Perry focuses on abstracts, such as those featuring dynamic and introspective women of color. “I am more comfortable painting my skin tone because I understand it,” she says.

She begins all her artwork with an abstract sketch, “and I see where it takes me.” She does not work from photographs, but through her own discovery by drawing shadows first—the darkest areas of the face—and then building out to the lightest areas. “My art teacher used to call me strange,” she says, “because I started with shadows.”

Also, Perry experimented with using gold-leaf medium when liquid gold paint wasn’t giving her the luster she desired. She calls gold leaf a “difficult medium,” and she uses it to model shapes and areas around a face. “It’s painstaking work,” but, she says, it is “radiant.” When she uses gold leaf, she says, “Wow! It makes colors look richer.”

Perry particularly admires her 40 in. x 40 in. acrylic on canvas, aptly titled Radiance, that profiles a woman, with highlights of gold leaf on her face and forehead—all set before an abstract background. She typically paints on canvas wood panels that range in size from about 12 in. x 12 in. to 30 in. x 30 in. and up to about 48 in. x 48 in.

Another of Perry’s themes for painting focuses on her Social Collection—artwork that developed from her own social anxiety, she says. “I’m an extreme introvert and very anxious. I’ve always been fascinated by people who are social. So, this collection plays on that idea—how colors and shapes interact, clash, and exhibit tension”—just as people do. She says, if you think you see a mistake in her work, it is there intentionally “to make you think about emotional aspects, shapes, and how they play with each other.”

Her work illustrates this notion in the Balance Collection piece titled Balance #2 that investigates linear shapes against a circle, and features variations of green and teal surrounded by white space. “It feels metrical, but it is not,” she says, as “at any moment, it could topple, but it is hanging in there.”

Balance #3, another painting, shows a series of blue-and-gray precariously stacked circles against a vertical line, a contemporary take on life’s fragility.

See more Perry art at KP Art Studio

The notion of balance entered her work after her father Milton Guthrie died. “When my dad passed,” she says, “my confidence was lacking.” She asked herself, “What can I do in the world now that we’ve lost him? I wanted to make him proud. I’ve always been daddy’s girl, but my world was out of balance—I didn’t know where to find it, and I was obsessed with trying to draw it” by reflecting on balance, piece by piece. And, she says, art has helped her to find balance in her life.

Perry loves to paint outdoors, when possible. “Wind in the air gives you energy to create—it’s wonderful,” she says. “Maybe it comes from growing up in another country. I’m always barefooted.” Her mother Lorna Guthrie often accompanies Perry during her plein-air painting. “She comes with me, watches me paint,” she says, “and talks to people.”

Aside from her work as an artist, Perry is a mother of two boys, ages 10 and 5, and a one-year-old girl.

she and husband Tavarus Perry also volunteer occasionally. They led in 2023 a story-and-sound program for the Boys and Girls Clubs of St. Joseph County, a group that meets at Harrison Elementary School in South Bend. “We had students create a story and add sound effects with the story,” she says, “using my husband’s audio recording equipment, speakers, computer, and software.” The couple is planning another club program sometime in 2024.

As a side note, Tavarus Perry brews Perry Vine, a mead product, or honey wine. Presently, he is manufacturing and distributing the mead. He signed a recent deal to serve Perry Vine at a local South Bend restaurant.

As for her future artistic aspirations, Kamika Perry says she is happy to “go with the winds.” She plans to exhibit this summer at Art Beat in South Bend. “If I’m painting for myself, it’s always a win for me.” But she says it would be “amazing” to exhibit some day at the Art Institute of Chicago, calling it the “highest honor.”

Perry says she wants to continue “using my canvases to inspire others.” One of Perry’s family members, she says, is ill and undergoing medical treatment for cancer. Perry is creating a piece to offer hope. The work includes a variety of vibrant greens, brilliant gold leaf, and white. Perry says she will use gold leaf to paint wings around an abstract figure of a person. She believes the work will “show respect” for the individual. Perry adds, “It’s mind-blowing that art can do that.”

Kamika Perry Daring to Dream