Animals Are Great By Joey Kette

Joey poses with a patron and her new portrait

Hi, my name is Joey Kette. I was born in Japan in August, 2000, and we moved to Florida when I was a baby. I have always lived with my parents. And so, I’ve been at Creative Clay as an artist for almost a year.

So, my favorite thing to do here at Creative Clay is to paint animals that I’ve seen at the zoo. Also, special species, including mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, insects … all of the above. My favorite medium is acrylic paint, and I paint every picture on canvas. I think my favorite paintings are colorful. Like, the one I did of the rainbow lorikeet. Also, the Malayan tiger that I painted. I like those two the best. The Malayan tiger is still here. The paintings I’ve sold are the African Elephant, the Massai giraffe and the one of Jason Moo Moah.

Painting of "Jason Moo Moah" A Highland Cow

So, things I want to create in the future, is like, for a charity here for Zoo Tampa. Like they, could use one of my paintings to put on t-shirts and mugs. Like the poison dart fog right here. It was based on, like, the opening of their new exhibit, Florida Waters. It’s opening this spring. I’m very excited to see it!

So now I’m working on paintings for the Earth Day celebration. So this year's theme for our Earth Day celebration is Reptiles and Amphibians. So that's why I did, like, this poison dart frog.

Joey working on his painting of a poison dart frog

In the future, I want to be right here, being a painter and selling lots of paintings online. Like, on a local marketplace. I want to sell lots of paintings.

Another thing I like to do is that I’ve been to Universal Studios a lot! They all know my name there. And Epic Universe is a brand new theme park there. So maybe if they get to know about me here, then maybe I could do artistry for Universal, too. I would draw portraits and do paintings for them. Yeah, that would be a very cool thing to do. Because I really like to paint animals!