Exclusive Interview with Laurie Victor Kay

Laurie Victor Kay is a versatile, multi-disciplinary artist whose practice seamlessly merges photography, painting, installation, and digital media. Her work explores themes of constructed imagination, idealization, and the surreal, creating thought-provoking visual narratives that challenge traditional boundaries between mediums. We asked her a few questions about her background and work:

All About Photo: Tell us about your first introduction to photography. How did you get started?

Laurie Victor Kay: My first “real” camera was a Pentax K1000. I was 14 and had a series of books on photography. I remember they were light orange, published by Kodak, I’m sure. There was a late snow storm in April, and I photographed plants peeking through the snow. Exposing film for this type of situation was a little crazy. I immediately loved photography. Prior to the K1000, I had a cobalt blue Canon Snappy. It was with this camera that I found out how much I loved photographing people.

Photography was something I was always interested in, but I never considered art as a career path. I was exposed to all types of art as a young person. My mother was very passionate about this and shared her joy. She was a single mother who raised five children and often expressed the importance of education and self-reliance. My decision to choose photography as an artistic path wasn’t until much later. I studied art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and found such magic in the darkroom, working with different cameras and experimenting with the medium. I reconnected with my love of seeing life through a lens. It was an extension of my world.


What do you hope your photography can communicate to viewers?

I hope my photography can first and foremost inspire others to pause and look at the world around them in new ways. Photography has been such a huge inspiration and it has given me so much understanding of the world: from the inorganic to organic, intersections of life on intimately personal levels to broader strokes of the natural world. I am always thinking about my work on levels that are psychological and subconscious. Because my work is often so intuitive, I also want viewers to trust themselves to make observations of their own. Nothing is ever so simple. I’m always looking at what lies beneath and the ways in which a visual image can communicate.

More recently, I’ve been wanting my work to go even deeper, to be more honest, to ask the viewer tough questions, to share experiences that might bring up complex emotions but as a result allow us all to connect in a greater way.

Can you tell us about your use of mirroring, reflection and fragmentation found throughout much of your work?

Symmetry is a balance to the chaos in my mind. It gives me a sense of peacefulness and calm. Though I don’t want to be defined by any single technique, I realize this need for reflection in my work is an overarching theme. It is different for the subject matter as well. With my series Trees, the balance I see when I use a fragment of an image to create a new composition is very freeing.

Because my background was originally in painting and drawing, the idea of using pieces, fragments or bits of a single image feels natural. I love Cubism, Minimalism, Abstract Expressionism, and the idea that a photograph can be so many things beyond the singular image.

The singular image is so important. In it I also find so much optimism because I can create with it much like architecture. It is a building block for what I see in my mind.


You also incorporate text in some of your work. How does adding language to a photograph change the experience for a viewer?

I love words, text, typography, languages and how they communicate. WORDS MATTER. All caps on that because I cannot think of anything more important than being aware of the way in which we speak to others and to ourselves. I say this from experience, as someone that has recently come through some extremely difficult times. Writing in the form of journaling is profoundly important to me. Additionally, I went through two major hand surgeries within the past two years. Experiencing severe chronic pain and losing the ability to write in the weeks leading up to the surgery, I became even more aware of the importance of words and writing. During the pandemic, I started cutting words out of different publications. The words jumped off the pages and I want to reinterpret their meanings. These words turned into moving works in a series titled Just Words. The series is not on my new website quite yet, but I plan to share it soon.

Ultimately, words and text paired with art allows for interpreting meaning in new ways. It can guide the viewer to a state of mind, tell them a story or give clues to new ways of thinking.


Can you tell us more about your interest in exploring the “interactions between nature and the inorganic”?

Contrast has always been important to me. The interaction comes more for me at the intersections of the various series I’ve worked on like Métros in contrast to Trees. Being below ground in dark spaces that are really colorful, or nearly monochromatic green trees in organic balance, or graffiti images in contrast to simple blue oceans in my Bleu X Blue series—these all provide contrast but also similarities to one another. I find that peeling paper from the wheat-pasted ads in metro stations to be fleeting, delicate and beautiful in ways that are also like the flowers in images like my cherry blossoms or new Lisbon flower images.

What other artists or photographers inspire you?

Yves Klein. James Turrell. Vivian Maier. Katarina Grosse. Georgia O’Keefe. Irving Penn. Jenny Holzer. Matisse. Rothko. Sally Mann. Joan Mitchell. Cecily Brown. Brancusi. Yayoi Kusama. Marina Abramovic.

How do you arrive at a given project?

I’m not sure it’s ever the same. It is very dependent on the type of project and what is involved. One example is my Gratitude Project, a 3-D projection mapped project that I conceptualized, produced, directed, and created during the pandemic. The idea started with an email, a thought I had that I was not afraid to share, and it developed from there.

Being fearlessly creative is so helpful. When I trust my instinct, that is when the magic of the creative process happens. Arriving at a project requires being present. For me this starts from the deepest part of my soul. I meditate and do a lot of yoga. This practice of being in tune with the outer world relates to my work deeply. On some projects arriving requires listening, asking questions, and being open to interpretation. I love to learn. I’m naturally very curious so asking is easy for me.

I love finding new ways to do things and letting the unexpected create happy accidents. I believe there are no accidents.


Do you have a preconceived idea of what to photograph or does an idea emerge on its own?

I try to stay open to the process. I don’t want to be locked into something preconceived. For most of my career, I was the one who would take a camera off the tripod, step around the subject to find a different point of view. I’d sit lower or stand higher, making intentional blur on sharp lenses, asking people to share, laugh, encourage an honest exchange. It is from these in-between spaces that the ideas emerge.

What’s next for you?

It’s happening right now as I type. My excitement is immeasurable. Call it ACT II or La Deuxième Partie. I am rebuilding everything and it’s exciting, freeing, incredible, scary, and beautiful. I’ve met the most amazing people from all over the world after some recent travels to Paris and Amsterdam, where I also made some new work.

In the near future I’m aiming to develop more collaborations with companies that bring art to the world in new ways and installations with my work in three dimensional spaces that bring in elements of sound, sculpture and time.

Two very special series that I have been working on, P A T H O S and apothecary, have mostly been out of the public eye but now are finally getting out there.

I’m so very proud of all this work and what is to come. After losing my mother to a short battle with cancer this past year, I realize more than ever the brevity of life and the importance of kindness.



Laurie Victor Kay
Laurie Victor Kay (b. 1971) is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work blurs the lines between photography, painting, installation and digital mediums to address constructed imagination, idealization and a sense of the surreal. Her various bodies of work range from photographic series that reimagine and abstract the everyday to autobiographical mixed-media series that examine the psyche, vulnerability and contemporary culture. Throughout all her practice, she emphasizes seemingly opposing elements as a means to visualize psychological landscapes and the structural interactions between nature and the inorganic.

She studied painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and photography at Columbia College Chicago (BFA, 1995). Her work can be seen in permanent installations at UNMC’s Lauritzen Outpatient Center and Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center, the Women’s Center for Advancement, May River Capital in Chicago, 4 World Trade Center in New York, Marriott Capitol Arts District, and Tenaska. She has exhibited throughout the United States and Europe, and her work is held in numerous private collections around the country. She is the recipient of numerous awards, has collaborated with companies across the globe, like Jim Thompson Thai Silk Company and Solé Bicycles, and has worked with an impressive roster of clientele, including the likes of Nike, Alanis Morisette, Warren Buffett, Robert Redford, Michael Douglas, Alexander Payne, Gigi Gorgeous, The Red Cross, The New York Times, Condé Nast Traveler, to name a few. She is a current member of the Healing Arts Advisory Board for the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

She currently lives and works in Omaha, NE.