Bio

Driven by an intense imagination and a narratively driven mind, Kyla Zoe Rafert’s work is technically stunning and psychologically complex. The paintings are painstakingly created over a 3-4 month period, usually in gouache. Tiny paintings are often featured on the wall within her larger paintings, creating layers of meaning that unfold over time as each detail is noticed. Ultimately, these paintings are a treatise on the multiple, sometimes conflicting expectations society has for women, and the often-confusing transition from girlhood to adulthood. Having struggled with anorexia for the majority of her adolescence, Rafert’s own coming of age was particularly fraught and confusing, and her love-hate relationship with feminine ideals forms the foundation for her work.

Rafert is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, with residencies at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, The Vermont Studio Center, and Women’s Studio Workshop, among others. She is also a member of the International Guild of Realism. Her work has received national recognition by New American Paintings, American Art Collector, and elsewhere. She earned her B.F.A. in Printmaking from the Rhode Island School of Design and her M.F.A. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where she studied printmaking on a full scholarship. Rafert lives with her husband and two young daughters on their homestead south of Columbus, Ohio. There, in addition to making art, she is busy mothering, tending livestock, and nurturing a large kitchen garden.

Statement

Echoing fairy tales, Dutch genre paintings of the 17th century, and overly sentimental 19th century literature, my paintings illustrate adolescent girls and young women in scenes that play on feminine and Romantic notions, such as the peril of curiosity, the potency of beauty, and the inevitable fall of innocence. Fundamentally feminist in nature, these paintings explore uniquely feminine archetypes; the witch, the seductress, victim, caretaker, animal charmer, daydreamer, and the inherent tension between them.

Their narrative is set in a meticulously designed world of vanity, beauty, and abundant pattern that evokes a carefully designed stage more than it does the happenstance of real life. Filled to the brim with pattern, the spaces I present are nonetheless unnaturally sparse. Clues to the narrative are few but potent. I approach my subjects as a puppeteer; carefully positioned, their painstakingly rendered dresses, undergarments and even their shoes are all designed to complement the colors and patterns within the room. The resulting paintings tempt us with their indulgent beauty while toying with our compulsion to both deconstruct and idolize feminine tropes and archetypes.

Many people mistake these works for digital art or collage, but they are paintings, and all on one surface. They generally take me 3-4 months to complete, and every element, including the patterned dresses, is hand painted, with the exception of the pattern on walls and floor, which I screen print directly on to the painting as a final step.