Artist Kaylah René was in elementary school when she set up her first exhibit.
“My little brother and I would put on these galleries for my mom and dad and we would litter the room with our water colors and paintings and stuff,” Kaylah René (who does not use a last name) during an interview with The Park Record. “We would make them pay 25 cents to buy them.”
On Friday, May 4, Kaylah René, a senior at Mountain View High School in Orem, will reach a bigger venue when she present her works at the Starving Artist Exchange, 283 Main St., Kamas, during the First Artist Opening reception that will run from 7 p.m. until 9 p.m. Admission is free.
She will present the graphite and charcoal pastel series she calls “The Scribble People” along with some miscellaneous paintings, including some blind contours, which she did by only looking at the subject and not the paper while drawing.
“‘The Scribble People’ is about humanity and the illnesses of humanity,” she said. “I started using them as a symbol of individuality and ended up creating an entire world of scribbles and spots.”
Other works include “Self Destruction,” a painting she did two years ago.
“That was inspired by myself,” Kaylah René said. “I used to be this little blond girl that was stupid, and after my parents divorced, I started to fall apart. I changed everything about myself, so the image is of this girl with blonde hair and blue eyes melting away.”
Kaylah René has always been drawn to the freedom of expression in art.
“I liked being able to express whatever I felt to whomever I felt, and know that people would just have to deal with it,” she said.
Her artistic heroes include Henry Asencio and Ida Applebroog.
“Henry’s paintings are just so raw and I like when you look at them you can see the bluntness,” she said. “I like Ida Applebroog a lot as well. Her lines and shapes are killer.”
Kaylah René also respects Treton Doyle Hancock.
“I like him because he’s analytical like I am,” she said. “He’s like an artistic mentor and it’s nice because when I get stuck with my scribbles and dots, I can go to his ‘Vegan and Mounds’ series he did. That helps me because I see he has thought of an aspect that I haven’t thought of and then I’ll have to figure things out for myself.”
As with all her art, the biggest challenge for Kaylah René is to create what she sees in her mind’s eye.
“The finished piece never seems to be the way I see it in my head, which happens often,” she said with a giggle. “The hardest part is taking that idea and forming it into a piece of art and being OK with whatever comes out of it.”
Throughout the process, Kaylah René has learned to go with the flow.
“Sometimes, I still go a little overboard,” she said. “I tend to get over analytical and start to obsess over things.
“Going back to my scribble people, I found that creating them wasn’t enough,” she said.
“I had to know how they felt about all the terrible things that happen to them and I had to figure out where they lived and how they survived.”
Unlike some artists, Kaylah René doesn’t worry whether or not people understand her works.
“I don’t force my point of view on the people who look at my art,” she said. “One of my favorite things to do is to sit back and watch people decide what the art means to themselves. People will tell me what they think my art means and I love seeing and hearing the differences in people’s opinions.”
Kaylah René discovered the Starving Artist Exchange while driving through Kamas a couple of months ago.
“It was an art place and I thought I should check it out, so, I did,” she said. “When I saw some of the stuff they had, I thought, ‘Hey, I can do something like this.'”
After the visit, Kaylah René emailed owners Alisha Niswander, Cassidy Duhadaway and Katie Stellpflug.
“I asked if they would be interested in me and then I got really depressed because they didn’t answer for a month,” she laughed. “That sucked, but then they answered and it was like, ‘Oh, my gosh! They answered.
“I really like the energy of the place,” she said. “It’s hard to explain, but it has a great feeling because it’s small and I grew up in Kamas, and I like that it’s in my hometown, and I like that my art is going into the gallery because maybe someone else will like it, too.”
The Starving Artist Exchange, 283 Main St., Kamas, will present the works of Kaylah René for this month’s First Friday Artist Exchange on Friday, May 4, from 7 p.m. until 9 p.m. She is a senior at Mountain View High School in Orem and is a surrealist artist. For more information, call (435) 200-4722.