Biography

Hi, my name is Kailee.

This is my story.

In 2022 I lost my job because of Covid. When you are a working mother attendance was a challenge to say the least during that weird blip in time. Daycares would send your toddler home if they had a booger. Let’s be real, toddlers are made up of 80% boogers…like 10% goldfish crackers and then 10% pure magic. After I was let go I had time to think, reflect, slow down, and grow. I remembering feeling really embarrassed, angry… it was so unfair… and kind of scared too. I had never been fired before, or unemployed not by choice. I needed to do something, to feel better and distract myself from myself. Andrew my husband suggested that I tried painting again. I had dabbled here and there and had a fairly big collection of painting supplies already…somewhere buried the great abys that was our garage. So, I did, I dug out the treasures that were buried and… I couldn’t stop painting. It poured out of me. It felt like my soul was crying…with joy. I found my thing, the thing that silenced the thoughts in my head, the thing that helped me heal myself. It fixed something inside of me I didn’t know needing fixing.

As far back as I can remember, I LOVED car rides. I would stare out the window sometimes for hours, drinking lime Crush and salt and vinegar chips, thanks mom and dad. I noticed every mountain, rock, tree, river, marsh, everything… the shapes…the colours…I tried to memorize it all, but there was always too much. The details seemed to evaporate almost immediately. So, I took terrible landscape photos at the roadside rest stops, attempting to capture how I saw things, minus the outhouses… Although they did add a certain…something to the landscapes. I was trying to capture how I felt when I saw this nature documentary through the glass window. There was beauty everywhere, but the photos never came close. I was always so disappointed when I came back from London Drugs with my photo envelope. They seemed flat, and missing the life. Somehow though, this motion picture, and the feelings I got when seeing the landscape…imprinted in my memory.

Self taught, I started trying to recreate these images and feelings in my head, I had no idea what I was doing. I used paint straight from the tubes, 100% saturation, chunky shapes and form, this was a theme starting to star in all my paintings. I soon realized that this was what I had stored inside all along. I saw the wonder of the land and sky, bold colour, saturated, full of motion. I leaned into it full force, I let go of the concepts and ideas of what I thought I was supposed to be, and, I became what I was meant to be, an artist.

My name is Kailee Perret, I am a Canadian artist, nature lover, car ride enthusiast, mother, and daydreamer.

This is my story.