Kim Gagnon

Since she was 13 years old, Kim has been obsessed with art supply stores.

"I was drawn to them like a magnet. They were like a candy store for me, and I wanted to try everything," Kim recalls. "My mother could leave me there for hours. Instead of taking in the overall experience of an art piece in a gallery, I would stand within an inch of it, trying to see how they got that effect with the oil paint, even at a young age, and even though I had never picked up a paintbrush yet."

As soon as she graduated from college, her art obsession met Adobe Creative Suite, and "that took over my outlet for creativity almost entirely," Kim says. She earned a bachelor’s degree in graphic design with a minor in photography from Ringling College of Art & Design and went on to work as a graphic designer at Tervis Tumbler (including art direction for their 2019 product line), as art director at Books-A-Million and Advent Health Orlando (formerly known as Florida Hospital), and as creative director at Canterbury Church. She has freelanced or done design work for Jaguar Cars, Toys "R" Us, NASCAR, Yogurt Mountain, NFL, Sydney Olympics, Hot Tamales, Logo Athletic, and Hallmark. In addition to extensive photography courses from Samford University and Birmingham School of Photography, Kim has completed advertising classes and workshops at Virginia College, Samford University, and Alabama School of Fine Arts, including a focus on website programming, website design, HTML, and social media. She has a certification in AI for creative professionals from Ringling College of Art and Design. On the weekends, she takes family portraits, graduation photos, and the occasional wedding photography to explore layout and composition through the lens.