Kate Egan

Kate Egan

Kate Egan is an artist who specialises in taxidermy work. I attended a talk she was giving about how she came to work with taxidermy and give an insight into what that entails and the amour of wrk that actually goes into this also.
She is a self employed artist due to running her own business in taxidermy and said that this is very empowering as she can now "bang to the beat of her own drum". She gave a very inspirational speech that i can relate to myself and my own work even though she has a different profession to the one that i am pursuing.
She spoke about how the internet and social media and free advertising basically, has helped freelance artists a lot in recent years and how she utilised this for herself also using website such as easy to advertise and sell her work. She also spoke of how Instagram is good for advertising work and getting her work known to people and getting her name within the community of interest to her profession and artwork. I can apply these ideas f self advertisement to my own work as i have also seen studios such as the Killogramme in manchester using Instagram to promote their work and keep followers updated with their latest work.

Kate then went on to discuss the value of work and how artists are often made to feel like they should make their pieces as cheap as possible in order to compete with other artists etc, however she said that we should value our work enough to put a price on it that we see fit regardless of completion etc and that this will reflect the buyers perception of how they view the work also as the price indicates the artists value in their own work and the time that they have put into it and that the value reflects the quality.
She gave some insight to her time at college and studying art and how she didn't know what she wanted to do prior to going into taxidermy and spoke about how she had a job that she wasn't happy with and didn't think she would be able to fund herself by pursuing her interests in art.
She spoke about how she started her own business by getting funding from a job centre in stockport where she was given an enterprise allowance and made a business plan.
The main inspiration about listening to Kate was that she pursued what she wanted to do even though it seemed unachievable and was looked down upon by people or not sen as something to take seriously and she made a business for herself now doing what she loves doing and that in itself is inspiring to me with regards to my own work and to remind me that even if i don't succeed at first i will keep pursuing my goals.