We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Carly Veronica White. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Carly Veronica below.
Carly Veronica , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – walk us through the story?
In 2017, I was living in Austin, Texas where I had moved a few years earlier to escape the stress, pollution and traffic of Los Angeles. My partner & I built a beautiful life there—living in East Austin surrounded by fireflies, we built our animation business Remote Image & Motion, passionately continued to create our own original artistic works and enjoyed swimming in the cold springs of Barton Creek with our dog Luna.
But beneath the surface, I knew something was changing. My partner felt pulled back to Los Angeles to take over his family’s entertainment business, and I knew returning with him would mark the end of my own path in animation. After 10 years in the animation industry as a director & producer, I had truthfully outgrown it. My heart was pulling me back toward a more authentic life as an artist.
In Austin, I had begun exploring that shift through maker spaces like TechShop and ATX Hackerspace, where I developed a fine art practice using layered birch plywood, epoxy resin, and hand-drawn work encased in walnut frames. Leaving Austin meant losing not only my home, but also my studio and creative sanctuary.
After only two days back in Los Angeles, I made one of the biggest decisions of my life: I left on my own to Northern California. After moving through four farms around northern California and saving money, I ended up at a 10-day Vipassana silent retreat in Kelseyville. It was there I realized I needed to go to India.
In January 2018, I boarded a plane alone. During that 35-hour journey, stopping briefly in China, Thailand and then finally landing in New Delhi, phrases began arriving in my mind like mantras: The past is Gone, the Future is Unknown and To Be in the Moment is the Miracle. I began sketching and painting them in my journal, not yet knowing they would become the foundation of my next chapter.
By the end of February, I painted my first mural in Coorg, India with the words To Be in the Moment is the Miracle. It was during this creation that I fell deeply in love with mural making and realized it was my true artistic path. That mural is still there today, and I still receive messages and photos from people who have been touched by it.
From there, I traveled throughout India and Nepal, painting murals and following what felt like a spiritual calling. While completing my 200-hour Hatha yoga teacher training near Rishikesh, I was invited to paint three murals in Bir Billing in the Himalayas.
The risk of leaving everything in my life as I knew it to travel to India to follow my spiritual calling changed everything. It led to the end of my five-and-a-half-year relationship, but it also led me back to myself. What began as a soul-searching journey became the moment I discovered my purpose as an artist as a muralist and a leader of participatory art who teaches participants how to ignite their creative spark in their communities to heal the streets and the soul. Sometimes the most painful risks are the ones that reveal who we really are.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I have been an artist for as long as I can remember. No matter where life has taken me—through animation, mural making, fine art, teaching, writing, and performance—creativity has always been the constant thread guiding me back to myself. I’ve explored many disciplines over the years, and while that has sometimes made it difficult to fit into a single “box,” it has also become one of my greatest strengths. Today, my business is centered around my work as a muralist and multimedia artist, creating original large-scale works for homes, businesses, and public spaces, as well as leading collaborative art experiences and team-building workshops that allow people to connect through the healing power of creativity.
I believe my artistic path is deeply rooted in my family history. Creativity and service run through my lineage. My grandparents, Charles and Bettina White, were both Marines and artists. After serving during World War II, my grandfather devoted himself to photography, painting, writing, and a lifelong Hatha yoga practice, while my grandmother brought beauty and expression into her life through dance and taught ballet.
My father, William White, is a Vietnam War veteran and Purple Heart recipient who later poured his creativity into restoring vintage cars, pen-and-ink drawings, and hand-building large-scale wooden trains piece by piece. Growing up around that level of craftsmanship and devotion showed me that art is more than a profession—it is a way of life.
What sets my work apart is that it comes from a place of heart, intuition, and storytelling. Whether I’m creating a commissioned mural, designing work for a business, or guiding a group through a collaborative art experience, my goal is always the same: to create something that inspires connection, healing, and transformation.
What I’m most proud of is staying true to my artistic evolution and building a brand that reflects not only what I create, but who I am.
Have you ever had to pivot?
Ever since attending California Institute of the Arts, stepping into new mediums has never been something that scared me. CalArts is a place that celebrates all forms of artistic expression, and that environment gave me the confidence to see creativity as limitless rather than confined to one discipline
For my final film there, I produced and directed a live-action project with Ankit Love in England and brought five fellow CalArts students to work alongside me. We filmed on a pirate ship in Plymouth and shot underwater sequences at The Underwater Studio in Essex. At the time, moving from animation into live-action filmmaking felt like a major pivot, but it was one I embraced fully because my love for the arts runs so deep.
That willingness to pivot has followed me throughout both my business and my life. I’ve learned that sometimes trying something new leads exactly where it’s meant to, and other times it teaches you what doesn’t fit. Both outcomes are valuable. For me, the real risk is not in changing direction—it’s in staying somewhere that no longer feels aligned.
As a creative, I truly believe your genius can be applied to anything you feel called to explore. My passion has led me across many mediums, from visual art and storytelling to comedy and performance. I often joke that I’m a “professional show-off” because I love art so much that it naturally spills into everything I do.
That passion continues to evolve. Beyond my work as a visual artist and muralist, I’m deeply drawn to performance arts and even have goals of becoming an aerialist. To me, risk and pivoting are simply part of living an authentic creative life.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
In 2019, I moved into the Brewery Arts Complex with my partner at the time. I was excited to fully pour my energy into building my mural career, and before the pandemic began, I had already completed two large-scale works. Then, on my birthday—March 13, 2020—the world changed.
During the next year and a half of COVID, I transformed my loft into a personal sanctuary. One of the most meaningful works to come from that period was Love in Joshua Tree, an immersive mural installation inspired by the beauty and spirit of the Mojave Desert. I created it as a way to bring the healing energy of nature into an industrial Los Angeles space while remaining safely indoors.
The floors, walls, and ceilings became a fully immersive landscape—rock formations, desert plants, animals, and a sky that shifted from day to night as viewers moved through the space. It was born from my deep love for the high desert and my desire to create a place of connection during a time of profound isolation.
At the same time, I was facing immense personal hardship. The warehouse housed several lofts, and the master leaseholder began targeting me with severe harassment and an attempted illegal eviction that I fought for seven months. My attachment to my home and the work I had built there came at a tremendous cost, including the loss of my relationship.During this already devastating period, I also experienced a traumatic assault by someone who had approached me under the pretense of offering a mural commission. The emotional aftermath of that event, combined with the housing instability and personal loss, became one of the most difficult chapters of my life.
Ultimately, I made the heartbreaking decision to leave my home and the artwork I had created there in order to protect myself and begin again.
I bought a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter van, packed up my belongings, and returned to Northern California to be close to my family while I grieved the loss of both my relationship and my home. It was an incredibly painful period, and the healing process took years. I lived with PTSD, anxiety, and depression as I slowly rebuilt my life and sense of self.
Eventually, I returned to Los Angeles and joined IATSE 729 as a set painter & sign writer . I worked steadily for a year until the writers’ strike began—the largest strike in Hollywood history—which ultimately resulted in the loss of my job.
Once again, life asked me to pivot.
I decided to leave Los Angeles and move back into my Sprinter van. Around that same time, my mother suffered a fall and broke her hip in San Luis Obispo County, so I relocated there to be near her while she recovered in a nursing facility. After completing several mural commissions, I moved to Ventura, where I lived in my van and rented an art studio for several years, continuing to create while healing.
That chapter taught me more about resilience than any other period of my life.
Today, I have relocated to the Sierra Nevada foothills to be closer to my family, and this May I will be opening a gallery in Strawberry, where I will share my artwork and teach art to others.
What I’m most proud of is that I kept creating through every loss, every setback, and every moment when life asked me to begin again. Resilience, for me, has meant choosing art, healing, and hope even in the darkest times.
Sun Salutation
The sun salutations are a series of yoga poses practiced at dawn. Created with layers of painted wood embedded in epoxy resin, this piece represents the awakening of my soul.
Dimensions- 2ft x 4ft , Epoxy, paint & wood $33,333
Sunset Bloom
This mural was commissioned for the CW show All American created in North Hollywood, CA
Dimensions- 18ft x 30ft ,Aerosol on Stucco $33,333
Prints Available, DM for more information
The Divine is Within
Created during my 6 month backpacking trip to India in the small town of Bir Billing in Himachal Pradesh after I completed my 200 hour Hatha yoga teacher training certification.
6ft x 30 acrylic on plaster
Prints Available, DM for more information
Trinity
Trinity is a meditation on the magic of water and balance, where three green throat darter fish shimmer beneath the surface as symbols of the Ayurvedic doshas—kapha, vata, and pitta. Inspired by the sacred waterways of Barton Creek in Austin, Texas, the piece honors the healing energy of water, harmony, and the ancient wisdom of Ayurveda.
Dimensions-30" in diamator , Epoxy, paint & wood $7,777
Yours Truly
Yours truly is a shape shifting representation of the fracturing and rebirth experienced in my meditation practice. The colors are inspired by the shifting aurora borealis.
Dimensions- 2ft x 4ft , Epoxy, paint & wood $33,333
The Turning Sea
In The Turning Sea, two koi circle endlessly—
a quiet orbit of longing and return.
They move as the tide moves:
pulled by unseen forces,
drawn toward each other,
never separate, never still.
Light folds into dark,
dark gives way to light—
a rhythm older than memory,
soft as breath, constant as the moon.
Here, the sea does not crash—
it turns.
And in its turning,
everything becomes whole.
Acrylic painting on birch 24” circular painting or table
by Carly Veronica White & Zuri White - $1,500
Image Credits
Be Your Own Guru & The Divine is Within by @ankitguptaphotography
Painting the Turning Sea at Pinecrest Lake by Nicole Hill @sonoraliving
The Turning Sea is a collaborative painting by myself and my nibling @zurirenn
