About

Karli Kain is a multidisciplinary creative whose work has moved across art, design, styling, branding and marketing. The thread running through it has never been the medium. It's the eye.

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It started in op shops. As a kid, Karli foraged the racks for the piece nobody else had noticed, and treasured the parcels of clothes her pop would send. She painted, danced and performed, and quietly loved maths.

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Somewhere along the way she picked up an unspoken rule: smart was the real path, and creative was a hobby at best. Something you couldn't build a living on. She believed it for a long time.

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So she found other ways in. Karli spent years in retail merchandising at Myer and Nike, then designing and installing windows for a Perth designer boutique, dressing Ganni, Versace, Stella McCartney and Moncler for the street. The window taught her that people decide in seconds, and they decide with their eyes. That lesson sits behind everything she does now.

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Stage design and floral installations followed. So did a chapter as a counsellor, where she learnt to listen for what people weren't saying and ran whole-school events for more than 2,000 people.

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She studied advertising and PR over eight years while working full time, and the strategy caught up with the styling. Since then Karli has launched brands and co-founded a playground company. She works alongside small business owners to get clear on what they sell and who it's for, and to show up consistently enough that the right people notice.

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Her abstract paintings are where both sides meet: colour and instinct, held together by structure. She no longer believes creativity can't be a career. The work is proof.

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Karli lives and works in Perth.