A Columbian mammoth towers above the savannah, its ivory tusks curling in the shape of a smile. In the background, more mammoths follow, bathed in a warm glow from the pink and purple sky.
If you’re looking to spot these majestic creatures from your backyard, you’re about 10,000 years too late.
But in a 12-foot mural at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, these creatures live on, thanks to Fort Worth native Karen Carr.
Carr is a natural history and exhibit artist whose work is on display at museums across the country. She created several pieces for the Perot Museum before its opening in 2012, including murals of creatures like the Columbian mammoth and smaller images of dinosaurs that are featured on display boards.
Today, she is self-employed, and creates murals, 3-D digital sculptures, animations and more for clients including the Smithsonian, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Audubon Society.
Her goal is to transport her audiences to prehistoric scenes and historical moments, using her artistic talents to create vivid depictions of everything from dinosaurs to submarines. She wants to create artwork that immerses children and their families in new worlds at museums and interactive displays.
“As a kid, I wanted to be immersed in the environment described. I wanted to be in the Cretaceous, or I wanted to be underwater with the whales,” Carr said. “I wanted to feel like I could sense that environment, and I think artwork is still an excellent way to do that.”
Carr was raised in Arlington. Her mother, Linda Carr, was a biologist, and her father, Bill Carr, was a self-employed artist and illustrator. Carr says both her parents had a huge impact on her career path, and watching her father navigate his career as an independent artist prepared her to do the same.
“The important lessons I learned – basically, how to be an artist, and then how to be a professional artist – I learned from my dad,” Carr said.
Carr initially planned to attend the University of Texas at Austin as a chemistry student, but accidentally traveled there for registration a week early. While wandering around the campus, she found her way to the art department, met the director and spontaneously switched her major to the art program.
She transferred to the University of North Texas two years later to take advantage of its internship opportunities and student design shop. After graduating and completing a business graduate course at the University of Texas at Dallas, Carr began a short-lived career in advertising.
“I mean, you can only do so many advertisements for orange juice,” Carr said.
After giving birth to her daughter in 1987, Carr began to consider what she truly wanted to do with her life. That introspection led her to natural history artwork: combining her mother’s love for science, and her father’s passion for art.
Carr put together an art portfolio, started making cold calls and eventually snagged her first job with the Dallas Zoo. She created her own company, Karen Carr Studio Inc., in 1990, and hasn’t looked back since.
Carr’s been creating her work digitally since 1995. She uses a computer program called ZBrush to model 3-D objects and a program called Blender for modeling and animation. She also uses Corel Painter to add color and textures to her work. Using Corel Painter, Carr can make her murals look like oil paintings or watercolors, even though they were created on a computer. But, digital murals can be just as difficult to design.
“I had to learn to be an artist before I picked up a PC,” Carr said. “Because the computer is just another pencil.”
Carr paints her murals full-size, so that they’re just as sharp in-person as they are on her computer screen. If she’s painting a paw on a saber-toothed tiger, she zooms in on the paw to work on it while keeping the final product in mind.
“You have to keep the mural in your head, and you go in and out and back and forth, just like you would back up from a wall,” Carr said.
While designing murals for the Perot Museum’s T. Boone Pickens Life Then and Now Hall in 2011, Carr worked with Ron Tykoski, the museum’s director of paleontology and curator of vertebrate paleontology.
Tykoski and the museum staff wanted prehistoric murals to accompany the dinosaur and mammoth skeletons in the exhibit, hoping to show visitors what Dallas might have looked like when those creatures roamed the earth.
Once Carr created samples for the museum, she went back and forth with Tykoski and staff, making tweaks to the art so that it was true to the science. When the museum was satisfied with the final product, Karen submitted the images in time for the museum’s opening in 2012.
Tykoski said Karen’s murals set beautiful backdrops for the skeletons and creatures in the exhibit.
“It creates the environment to let people know, yes, this isn’t just science fiction,” Tykoski said. “These are real, living, breathing things in a real place, that I can relate to: far more so than just a static pose of bones.”
Carr said watching families engage with her artwork is one of the best parts of her job. She likes to hang out near her murals and watch people react to what she’s created.
“Getting kids to stand still in a museum is a challenge,” Carr said. “So if I can produce something where they actually stop and look at it, and point things out, I feel like I’ve done a good job.”
Ten years out from her job with the Perot Museum, Carr has a steady list of clients. She’s no longer in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and works remotely from New Mexico. Her passion for art spurred her toward this career, and it’s what keeps her going to this day.
“It’s a nice way to make a living,” Carr said. “It keeps you young, you have to keep learning constantly.”
Adithi Ramakrishnan is a science reporting fellow at The Dallas Morning News. Her fellowship is supported by the University of Texas at Dallas. The News makes all editorial decisions.
