Kayla Liberty has always enjoyed pushing boundaries. For her, it’s a combination of exploring the irregularities of life, as well as evoking powerful emotions from those who see her art.
Featuring a combination of paintings and drawings, Liberty’s exhibition explores what’s beneath the surface, physically, and emotionally and delved into the dilemma that is our own mortality.
“I wanted to explore the deterioration of the mind,” she said. “And what effects that might have on how we perceive the world as well as ourselves.”
Her first solo exhibition, which will take place Friday, will feature approximately 20 pieces, ranging in size from small to very large, as well as in style, from painting to drawing.
“They are just two angles of exploring the same idea,” she explained. “When I paint, it’s so much more liberating and is a more abstract style of approaching the idea, while when I draw, its hyper-realism.”
Liberty said while she bounced back between painting and drawing, she noticed she kept revisiting the idea of the deterioration of the mind, something she decided to anchor her work on as she prepared for a dream she had always had, her first solo exhibition.
This dream drew its roots from her childhood when she first began art with her family.
“My dad was an artist and when I grew up that was our form of entertainment,” she said. “I was so fascinated by how good it was, so it was so natural for me to be constantly be creating. My family really encouraged it too and by the time I was doing it as a hobby it started to catch on.”
However, as she grew older, Liberty discovered the challenges of being an artist in Northern Ontario and had to make a decision on her education and where she’d live, but she had a hard time seeing herself any place else.
“I had a decision to make when I got older and I decided to go for it because I was passionate about art,” she said about her decision to pursue the arts in school. ““I had choices to go out of town, but I wanted to stay here. I grew up here and this is home for me. There is some sort of pull for me here. It’s a hard path to be an artist in Northern Ontario, though.”
However, even during her time in university, she felt a social dissonance, following a style and ideology that didn’t quite grow parallel to the rest. However well-respected the beauty of Northern Ontario provides to artists, Liberty felt compelled to reach into the inner emotions that wore us down, eager to push boundaries and evoke strong responses.
“Maybe it’s good to have people doing things different in a big group of sameness,” she said. “Maybe it will start a conversation and intrigued the right people.”
And as her exhibition draws near, Liberty said she was excited for her first real jump into the next step of her journey as an artist and where it might take her.
“I want to keep doing these exhibitions,” she said. “I want to create bodies of work as much as possible while I have the time right now. I want to explore this artistic side of me.”
Grit + Dissonance is Liberty’s first solo exhibition as an artist and will be featured at the Raven and Republic during the Downtown Gallery Hop, Friday, November 18. However, her show will be opening 9 p.m. In addition, her exhibition will be featured again on December 8, with an auction.
