Christine Holub Carrig’s artistic journey began under the vast, ever-changing skies of Kansas, where fluting colors and luminous expanses shaped her deep appreciation for light and hue. This early inspiration led her to study graphic design at UC Santa Cruz, where she refined her eye for composition, color theory, and visual storytelling. She later earned honors at St. Mary’s College, expanding her creative approach through the study of marketing and business management.

Christine’s current work is a fusion of nature, nostalgia, and sentiment—woven together through an expressive use of color, asymmetrical compositions, and a keen sensitivity to negative space. Inspired by a series of WWII love letters, her latest collection layers history with emotion, using torn paper, hand-printed textures, and gold leaf to create pieces that feel like letters themselves—whispering fragments of a story through delicate layers. Intertwined with these echoes of the past are hand-drawn florals inspired by coastal wildflowers, their organic forms symbolizing resilience, devotion, and the fleeting beauty of love. Rooted in a deep connection to the natural world and the quiet poetry of human connection, her art is a tribute to memory, longing, and the beauty of nature.

Collection Title:

Spring Flowers & Love Letters:
This collection is inspired by the fleeting beauty of California Coastal wildflowers and the intimacy of love letters—both delicate, ephemeral, and deeply expressive. Each piece captures nature’s poetry and the sentimentality of handwritten words, woven together in texture and color. At heart, I am a romantic, drawn to the quiet emotions that linger in petals and paint.

Coastal Flowers Mixed Media:
Each floral piece features a delicate coastal wildflower, their intricate patterns and organic shapes pressed into modeling paste, preserving nature’s artistry in exquisite detail. Soft washes of vibrant watercolor breathe life into each imprint, highlighting its natural beauty. Finally, they are carefully cut and mounted onto a hand-printed acrylic background, enriched with gel plate textures, creating a layered, tactile composition that echoes the beauty of the wild coast.

Love Letter Collage:
I came across a collection of beautifully handwritten love letters from WWII—Maurice, who was a sailor stationed in Pearl Harbor months before the start of the War— pours his heart out to his beloved Jeanette. Each note begins with the tender words, “Hello Darling.” His longing, devotion, and affection echoed through every page, a testament to love enduring across distance and time. Inspired by this poignant exchange, I created collages using torn copies of the letters, layered with tissue, hand-printed papers, hand-drawn florals, and touches of gold leaf—each piece designed to feel like a letter itself, revealing only glimpses of their conversation beneath delicate layers of sentiment and memory.

If you are interested in reading the the love letters from Maurice his “darling” Jeanette you can find them here:

“Love Letters from a Sailor in the Pacific”  https://www.usni.org/archives/memoirs/love-letters-sailor-pacific-part-1