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VIRTUAL SENIOR SHOW: Kayla Martain

Kayla Martain
Wed, Feb 17, 2021, 12:00 am to Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 11:59 pm

VIRTUAL SENIOR SHOW: Kayla Martain

Art has always been a way for me to have a deeper connection to my feelings and identity as a woman and an artist. My pieces typically have a focus centering around the strength of women and the strength of nature, but for this set of pieces I wanted to focus on the strength of myself while facing my past trauma.

At the end of July 2020, I was involved in a breakup with someone deeply struggling with the illness of addiction. When I signed up for a senior show for this quarter, all of the romanticized ideas I’d been tossing around since my first year of what my senior show would be flew out the window, and I knew that I wanted this project to focus on my experience and the healing nature of art.  

These seven paintings center around an abusive relationship with someone who is sick with addiction. This project is about reclaiming my body, my heart, and the amount of space and time I give to someone who has deeply affected my life-- positively and negatively. This is about bringing myself closure, facing my trauma, owning the happiness that lives inside of my soul, and recognizing the strength that I have and continues to flourish.

These paintings are dedicated to myself, my mother, grandmother, Katie Hughes, and every single strong woman who has overcome abuse in any capacity.

 

Kayla Martain

“Let Me Go”

Oil on Canvas

14 x 18 inches

2021

This painting is about the feeling a partner has over you even once they have left. For months after parting from my lover, I could feel his fingerprints on my skin and on my heart. I could feel the grooves of his skin everywhere I was looking, even when I no longer wanted them to be there. My body was being held onto the way an alcoholic holds onto a beer-- with admiration and excitement in the beginning, but as time flows, the grip loosens and becomes full of resentment. This painting is about letting go and reclaiming my body as my own, as it always has been. My body is not an object for someone else to hold onto, physically or metaphorically.

 

Kayla Martain 2

“Rats Feet Over Broken Glass”

Oil on Canvas with broken glass glued on

12 x 14 inches

2021

This painting is a part of a three part series picturing my feet, my spine, and my hands. The glass on the canvas is from a broken bong, representing the struggle of being and being around an addict. This painting of my feet shows feeling the need to walk on glass in order to not incite anger or negative responses. The feet are positioned unnaturally, which represents the unnatural position people are put in during episodes of inebriation.

 

Kayla Martain 3

“Not With a Bang, but a Whimper”

Oil on Canvas with broken glass glued on

14 x 16 inches

2021

This painting is a part of a three part series picturing my spine, my hands, and my feet. One of my earliest memories with my partner was when he was about to move houses, got drunk, and threw his bong against the wall of his bedroom in a fit of rage, shattering glass into the carpeted ground. The neck of the bong being pressed into the spine displays the feeling of being unable to stand back up until the glass is removed.

 

Kayla Martain 4

“The Supplication of a Dead Man’s Hand”

Oil on Canvas with broken glass glued on

12 x 14 inches

2021

This painting is a part of a three part series picturing my hands, my feet, and my spine. This painting represents the struggle of trying to reach out to someone, but not being able to fully touch them. You can try and help someone through their struggles, but unless that person is seeking out the help for themselves, you can only lay witness while they experience their own journey.

 

Kayla Martain 5

“My Pain Fits in the Palm of Your Hand”

Oil on Canvas

12 x 14 inches

2021

This is a still life painting of a glass beer bottle with sunflowers in it that are in the process of dying. This is a conversation about the changes of a person over a long period of time when plagued with addiction.

 

Kayla Martain 6

“Not Ours, but Mine”

Oil on Canvas

8 x 10 inches

2021

This is a painting of my bedroom window at my mom’s house, where my partner and I lived together for the summer. During this time, I really witnessed all of the dark sides that someone faces when they’re deeply ill with addiction. I would look out the window for answers, only to be met with the silent comfort of nature.

 

Kayla Martain 7

“I Still Feel High”

Oil on Canvas

5 x 5 inches

2021

I have genuinely never cried more in my artistic practice than I have while painting this. There were so many nights where I would look at my partners hands and wonder how it was even possible that I could love one person so entirely-- that I loved someone from the tips of their fingers to the bottom of their feet, through all of the illness and evilness of addiction and abuse, even at the detriment of my own happiness and light. Yet here I sit, painting someone I loved so entirely as a way to heal from the trauma they wrought during their downfall. It was extremely surreal and heart wrenching, and yet, extremely healing to finish this group of work with such an emotional painting.