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On order and chaos

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Photo by Madoline Markham.

Kay Vinson’s art starts on the street.

In cities, she searches for graffiti, rust or glass bricks, urban decay she said “people often find unsightly,” and photographs them to later incorporate into her art. 

“I like the energy of cities,” she said. “That shot of energy keeps me going for a while.”

The photos are only one element of how she seeks to balance order and chaos in her work. First her pieces begin with random markings, such as the squiggles in the piece pictured. From there she determines where a photo fits and then a color scheme. She cuts a transparency made from a photo into a shape, often a circle, and adds acrylic paint and enamel. Sometimes when she feels like a piece needs one more element, she will add the numeral 5, the number she said she finds most appealing, to complete the spontaneous process.

The end result, she said, feels cosmic, like something you would see through a telescope or microscope. She can also see the influence of Asian cities, where she spent years traveling as an international flight attendant. 

Twenty of her pieces will be on exhibit at The Joy Gallery at Homewood Cumberland Presbyterian Church starting Oct. 11.

For Vinson, the process is just as important as the product. 

She has created art all of her life, but it wasn’t until she was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2001 that she “made a serious commitment to art.” 

“Cancer made me aware of the fact that I am not immortal, and I wanted to leave a legacy,” she said. 

Following surgery, Vinson faced an extended period of depression and anxiety where she reassessed everything in her life. 

“Working on art helped me deal with my emotions,” she said. “The making of it was very, very healing.”

For instance, adding a series of dots to a work gets her very quiet, almost like a meditation.

After her cancer diagnosis, Vinson found herself wanting to return somewhere familiar as well. The Homewood native had lived in California for 27 years following high school, where she studied art at San Jose State University, and then Memphis for five. So in 2003, she and her husband moved back and renovated a home in English Village, adding a studio for her above the garage. 

It was also at that time that she began to show her work for the first time, which made her anxious. More than a decade later, her nerves are calmer headed into this month’s show, her second at The Joy Gallery. She has now shown her work in Montreal, California, New York and all the Southern states except South Carolina.

She still, however, said she has a hard time describing her art in words. 

“It’s hard for me to talk about it,” she said. “If I could say it, I wouldn’t need to paint it.”

For Vinson, her art is her expression, and her studio is its home.

“Art takes me out of myself for a while,” she said. “I forget to be terrified.”

To learn more about Vinson’s work, visit kayvinsonart.com.

Kay Vinson Art Exhibit

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