Ley

Killeya

Originally from England, I settled in the US, and after completing my graduate studies in psychology at Rutgers in New Jersey, moved with my family to North Carolina in 2004. My undergraduate degree included a wide range of studio and history of art coursework but I did not pursue art after graduation. I returned to art making about four years ago as a way to process loss. Exhibitions 2023 Joe Van Gogh coffee shop, Durham, NC, Featured Artist(June) Goldenbelt Artists, Durham NC, Au Community Art show Artspace, Raleigh, NC, Scaffold / Taking Up Space juried exhibition Las Laguna Art Gallery, CA, online Figures and Faces exhibit Town of Chapel Hill, NC, Public Spaces Juried Solo exhibition (July-August) Shain Gallery, Charlotte, NC, Juried Group Show, Up and coming artists (July-August) 2022 311 Gallery, Raleigh NC, All Abstract National juried show 311 Gallery, Raleigh NC, OMG Wow! National juried show 311 Gallery, Raleigh NC, Something for Everyone^2 Durham Art Guild, Juried showcase Durham Art Guild, Member showcase 64 Harvard gallery, Graham NC, juried Neon exhibition 2021 Durham Art Guild, Member showcase

Working mostly in acrylic and oil pastel, I’m interested in how female and femme identifying bodies and the ways others read them – the parts we have, the way we look, with whom we share them – are used to confer power, limit rights, exercise control, and interrogate identity. My approach to the human figure is to simplify the form, and avoid clear markers of self, such as race, age, or facial features; my goal is to communicate how our bodies are seen as objects without personalities or thoughts, and yet how we can transcend the visual aspect of our presentation and retain and control the privacy of our own thoughts, emotions, and identities.

Acrylic, Mixed Media

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