Michigan State - Resilience Story

My name is Kathryn Bailey, I am an Abstract Impressionist striving to Reimagine Nature, who specializes in large canvas oil paintings. 

I graduated with my Bachelor's of Fine Arts in Painting and Graphic Design from Michigan State University in December of 2018!

Since then, my work has been featured in three issues of British Vogue, and I have participated in two group shows in lower Manhattan, NYC!

I’ve always tended to hide my emotions. I didn’t want people to see me as “weak” or “dramatic”, and because of that, I found myself laughing it off in front of other people if I got made fun of; or I would make jokes about myself because I felt like if I was doing it first, then no one else could do it. It took the sting out of it. 

At least that’s what I kept telling myself. 

 Instead of facing the pain of being bullied head on, when I would find myself in that situation I would just go to the barn or out to the woods behind my house. I found peace and comfort surrounded by nature. 

I still do this to this day - downplay what I’m feeling and run from the pain - maybe if I don’t talk about it, it will go away. 

    I also found myself painting flowers - so many flowers. It wasn’t until a few months in that I realized why I was doing it: flowers show time passing in a way that nothing else really does…there’s so much beauty in them, but sooner than you’d think - they’re gone. 

Time steals everything. It’s the one thing that cannot be stopped, and so with each painting, I think part of me - at least subconsciously - is trying to capture these moments and keep them. 

 Lastly, horses have always been a source of freedom for me. They make me feel confident and brave. They take me places I never would’ve dared to go otherwise; and I’ve always admired the way that some of them can be scared to death but turn and face their fears anyways. 

 Through these paintings I have tried to face my fears, deal with my emotions - good and bad - and my hope is that maybe, even though there is so much pain in the world, that we can find beauty in it, too. 

My influences have ranged from Van Gogh to Thomas Kinkade until finally settling back on my first influence: Claude Monet. I have always been fascinated by the Impressionist movement - the way they can take pretty much anything and make you feel such intense emotions while only giving just enough information. I think it walks a beautiful line between too much and too little. I strive to take inspiration from the Impressionists while putting my own contemporary twist on my influencers from long ago.