For some artists, creativity is a lifelong calling. For others, it opens a door to a world they never knew they needed.
For mixed-media and oil painter Kristin Kastner, art has become exactly that kind of doorway. With a background in business administration and years spent in investment management, her creative journey has developed alongside a very different professional life.
Yet art offered something entirely new.
“Art opened me a completely different world and gave me much more sense and inspiration,” Kastner explains.
Now, she hopes to make that world the centre of her career.
The contrast between investment management and artistic expression is striking. One is shaped by analysis and measured outcomes; the other can begin with intuition, curiosity and the simple desire to create.
For Kastner, discovering art has brought a new dimension to her life. Working in mixed media and oil, she continues to explore where her creativity can lead.
Her ambition is clear: “I want to move from my full-time job in the investment management industry into an art career.”
Kastner remembers the moment her art first entered someone else’s world.
In her twenties, she sold a painting on Etsy, an Art Deco-inspired portrait of a woman wearing a large black hat that concealed most of her face, leaving only her chin and red lips visible.
“I still remember how surprised and amazed I felt when someone actually clicked ‘buy.’”
For Kastner, the experience revealed something powerful: a work created from a deeply personal place could suddenly become meaningful to a complete stranger.
“In that moment, something deeply personal suddenly became something meaningful to a complete stranger.”
Kastner is equally interested in the boundaries of art. Asked whether Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans is an advertisement, a work of art, or both, her answer is simple:
“In my opinion it is both. A very good advertisement can always be also art.”
For her, artistic expression does not necessarily have to exist separately from commercial imagery. The two can overlap, inviting us to reconsider what makes something art.
Kastner’s artistic journey is still unfolding. While she has no upcoming exhibition to announce, her goal is to move from investment management into a full-time art career.
She accepts commissions and may explore prints in the future, continuing to build a practice that is becoming an increasingly important part of her life.
And when asked where her dream exhibition might take place, her answer is immediate:
Paris.
For now, that exhibition remains a dream. But dreams can provide direction and Kastner is already moving towards hers.
Her first Etsy sale showed her that art could connect her with strangers. Her experience of creating has given her inspiration and a renewed sense of meaning.
Investment management may have been the career she entered.
Art is the world she discovered, and the one she now hopes to make her own.
