Kailey Atkinson

Artist Bio

Kailey Atkinson is an artist and educator from Easton, PA. Her primary mediums are mixed media collage and illustration.

Kailey finds being an artist and having a career in the arts go hand in hand, embracing how these separate worlds inspire each other. She is currently pursuing her MFA at Clark University and teaching at Commonwealth Charter Academy. Kailey received her Art Teacher Certification at Moravian University and BA in Studio Art with a Minor in Art History at Cedar Crest College. Atkinson’s work has been exhibited at various institutions including the Banana Factory, Lehigh Carbon Community College, Northampton Community College, Eleven 20, Bradbury Sullivan LGBT Center, and Cedar Crest College. She has been interviewed by Lehigh Valley Arts Podcast and Canvas Rebel.

Artist Statement

Through the meditative process of collecting, archiving, cutting, and arranging, I create narratives with a playful maximalist aesthetic that explores societal issues, illness, feminism, and gender roles. I create work in celebration of caring for ourselves, finding joy, and reclaiming our power in the revolt against the capitalist hustle culture and impossible beauty standards I was raised within.

I love diving into materials from past eras, wondering what it would be like to live in seemingly simpler times- before technology tracked our every move and bombarded us with media and advertisements to sell us things to improve ourselves. What I have discovered is that there is no such thing as “simpler times,” and we are currently living in a world faced with many of the same injustices. The problematic gender roles that women were trapped in during the era that I source imagery from may seem a thing of the past, but women’s rights are still under attack.

My work draws parallels and finds humor between imagery from multiple generations, originally inspired by my father’s off-limits National Geographic collection and my grandmother’s obsessively chronicled photographs and ephemera. Not being able to let go of things is in my bloodline, as I observed the collecting, domestic decorating, and care for objects related to my family’s history.

My analog process allows me to reckon with my ties to this tradition, placing value on printed matter, archives of source material, and the gratification of making things by hand, in contrast to today’s social media culture reducing our attention span to fifteen-second video clips. My practice continues to expand through breaking the two-dimensional frame, experimenting with new materials and techniques, and incorporating photographs of my own memories into my compositions.