Karissa grew up on the Michigan / Ohio border and lived there until she left for college at Michigan State University. At a young age she experimented with different forms of art; whatever her mom and art teachers would let her get her hands on. While Art may have been one of her passions early on, she didn’t pursue it as a career opportunity at first. She ended up choosing Finance as her major because she wanted to learn and understand how businesses operated in hopes of one day starting her own.

Upon graduating with her Finance degree, she moved to Baltimore with a role in a Finance Leadership Development program. The stress led her back on a path to painting. She started off using acrylic paints and mainly painted landscapes. Trees, mountains, beaches, the sea at sunrise / sunset, basically anything involving nature. She quickly grew bored and frustrated, never feeling like her paintings captured any emotion and that they lacked something she couldn’t put her finger on.

She moved to Dallas for her job a year later, and her art transitioned as well. This year marks the start to her fluid abstract art. She started using just watered down acrylic paint and utilized different pouring techniques. She continued to produce acrylic fluid art for the remainder of her year in Dallas. When the year was up, she moved to Wichita for a new assignment and her art evolved as well. This was when she discovered her current love for resin and alcohol inks.

The past 3 years she's lived in Wichita she has focused on expanding her love for alcohol inks by experimenting on different substrates. She currently experiments with alcohol inks on yupo and clayboard with a resin finish. Most of her alcohol ink creations have a "speckled" look that she identifies as one of her styles.