The Artist

Krystl Louwagie graduated with a liberal arts degree in Studio Art (minor in Art History) from Hamline University in Saint Paul in 2009. She received two separate scholarships to study art abroad (the Genevieve Rust Ehlers Scholarship) in 2008 and 2009. In 2019 she received an employee grant from Southwest Minnesota Arts Council to go towards framing her artworks. In 2021 she received a Minnesota State Arts Board Creative Support for Individuals grant to go towards a new series chronicling the pandemic through mask portraits and to establish this website!

Louwagie works full time as a marketing and access coordinator for the nonprofit Southwest Minnesota Arts Council in Marshall, MN. She works part-time as an artist taking commissions, a professional face painter, doing website and social media content for artists and arts organizations, a petting zoo assistant, a pet sitter, and a Les Mills Body Pump Group Exercise instructor at her local YMCA.

Her interest in art began early in life through illustrated fairy tale books, super-hero comics and animated cartoons. She’s also very enthusiastic about reading, exercising, cooking, remodeling her 1950’s home and animals (especially cats)!

She believes strongly in equity and community building in rural spaces.

The Art

Portraits, especially self-portraits, have been dominating Louwagie’s artistic work for the better part of the last fifteen years. She experiments within 2-d visual mediums, but in subject matter works with figures and portraits that call forth narratives. She does this through a variety of forms ranging from simple line comics to more complex portraits focusing on linework, shape and pattern. Her bold lines and narrative qualities are often reminiscent of what drew her to art even as a child: illustrated fairy-tale books and super-hero comics.

Louwagie occasionally does commissions, mostly portraits (people and pets) for local businesses and individuals. She has taught and assisted classes at the Southwest Minnesota Arts Council Artist Retreat for multiple years and has taught art classes for Southwest Minnesota State University’s GOLD college (non-credit courses for adults that run for six weeks). She also taught multiple classes for the Granite Area Arts Council (in-person and on Zoom), the Makers Market in Granite Falls, The Appleton Arts and Culture Center, and the Hutchinson Center for the Arts.