Kayla King

Home: Curran, Ontario
Title: Pa
Media: Oil and alkyd on canvas
Dimensions: 92 x 92 cm
Website: www.kitkingart.com

Artist Statement

My father and I have not always been as close as we could be. With a direct parallel in our struggle to form interpersonal relationships, it’s made it difficult for either of us to take the necessary steps to connect with one another. Yet despite this divide, he has been the predominant artistic influence in my life. Being an artist himself, my earliest memories are of me standing at his works in awe. I remember looking at what he created with a sense of wonderment. His art had this way of transposing you to a new realm, where fantasy became reality. From a very early age I knew I wanted to do as he did- I wanted to paint pieces that were not just masterly created, but that gave countenance to inspiration, and touched the viewer on a deeper level. I painted this piece as a way to connect with my father through expressive impression, and to express my gratitude for his significant creative impact throughout the years. A ‘thank you’ for all he’s taught me, which will hopefully reach him in the same deep sense that his art has reached me.

Biography

Born November 29th, 1987, of two artist parents, I was raised with significant creative influence. I’ve witnessed the affect art had on their lives, and naturally kept art close to me throughout the years. Currently living in rural Ontario, where I was raised, I spend my days as a full time painter.

Through a focus on hyperrealism, my paintings are reflections of the ephemeral visual relationships around us, capturing fleeting moments that affect our emotional state from a singular glance, under the aegis of a heightened sense of reality. My current bodies of work are heavily focused on light and shadow, and how the element of light can alter the relationship of a viewer and subject. The goal being to propel the audience to connect to one transient moment, captured through mood, established from the control of light and shadow. I do not merely want to meticulously capture an image, but rather breathe a vital life force into transformed renditions of the world around me. I want my pieces to evoke a deep sense of emotion influenced not only from eminent attention to detail and sharpness, textural focus and reproduction, but jointly through liquidity of expression, and reflection of the beauty and power of contemporary art. I’m very much a recluse, who has a difficult time forming interpersonal relationships; painting in this manner of fabricated reality is my way of connecting to subjects.