Details
| First Name | Kayla |
| Last Name | Griffin |
| Username | kayla |
| Bio | I live and practice in Ogden, UT where I am also an adjunct instructor of visual arts. I am married to my best friend who is my strongest artistic supporter. Together we have a rescue dog, two rescue snails, and three rats. I graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in April of 2023 where I studied figurative painting. I am most interested in creating figurative pieces that challenge gender ideals. Specifically, I love to put male figures with feminine features in surreal settings. I love how people become so fixated on trying to figure out if the figure is a man or woman that they lose the story of the piece itself. This points out our deep concern in American Culture to know if the person we are looking at is a man or woman and we become so fixated on that concern that we lose context of everything else. |
| Website | |
| Country of residence | United States (US) |
Statement
| Statement | My work exists in the space between tension and tenderness. I explore the dichotomy of difficult emotions and lived experiences, trauma, memory, and survival, set against the resilience of joy. For me, joy is not naïve optimism but a deliberate, resistant act. Each piece is intended to be visually inviting yet emotionally unsettling, asking viewers to hold the coexistence of beauty and discomfort. I draw inspiration from liminal spaces, nostalgia, and the fragments of memory that shape how we navigate our world. My influences include Dorothea Tanning, Steven Kenny, Ferdinanda Florence, and Kazland, whose approaches to surrealism, narrative, and atmosphere inform the emotional cadence of my own work. Through painting, I aim to create moments where viewers feel both understood and challenged to be moved by a sense of hope and also confronted with the truths that underlie it. My practice is rooted in the belief that art can hold space for contradiction: pain and joy, fragility and resilience, past and future. |
Exhibitions
| Exhibitions | April 2024 – Group Exhibition & Fundraiser – Eccles Art Gala, Ogden, UT Jan. 2024 – Group Exhibition – Call of the Wild, Artlounge Collective, Los Angeles, CA July 2023 – Group Exhibition – Apothecary, Artlounge Collective, Los Angeles, CA June 2023 – Solo Exhibition Invitation – Belgrade Artist in Residence, Belgrade Serbia May 2023 – Curated the International Foundation for Gastrointestinal Disorders Patient Art Exhibition: https://iffgd.org/the-art-of-fgids/ April 2023 – Permanent Solo Exhibition – International Foundation for Gastrointestinal Disorders April 2023 – Solo Exhibition – TereVarna, Online Feb. 2022 – Artist in Residence – Belgrade Artist in Residence, Belgrade Serbia (Online) Dec. 2021 – Certificate of Achievement – Luxembourg Art Prize Dec. 2020 – Certificate of Excellence – Artavita Nov. 2020 – Group Exhibition Online – Show Goes On, An Online Party Experiment Mar. to Jun. 2020 – Artist Coalition – Gallery 25, Ogden, UT Jan. 2018 – Group Exhibition – Pure Exquisite Sin, Art at The Cave, Vancouver, WA May 2016 – Group Exhibition, RAW Artists, Boise, ID May 2014 – Student Showcase, College of Southern Idaho, Twin Falls, ID Published Projects Poetry Book Griffin, K. and Galaviz, M. (2024, February). Love Poems & Sticky Notes. Miracle Publishing Group, California. Research Paper Griffin, K. and McClellan, E (2017, February). Walleyball and the Socio-Material Rhetoric of Border Walls. Western States Communication Association, Salt Lake City. Anthology Thurston, J.W. (2014). Wolf Warriors: The National Wolfwatcher Coalition Anthology. Thurston Howl Publications, Murfeesboro, TN. “Guardian,” p.157. |
Interests and medias
| Interests | Mixed media, Painting |
| Painting medias | Acrylic, Ink, Oil |
Social Media