Anatomy of Empathy Through the Art of Laurie Victor Kay. The Interview

Laurie Victor Kay transforms the camera into a mirror of autobiographical vulnerability, using photography, video, collage, writing, and installation to reveal deeply personal emotional earths. Conversing with her means entering a world where art becomes an extension of life, where every image and every object tells a deeply intimate story, sometimes painful, sometimes liberating for the soul.

“When I started art school at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, I studied painting, drawing, and photography. Over the years, I began using multi-media with my mostly photographic practice intuitively. During the pandemic, I was really able to focus on all areas at once. I started to understand my practice like a color wheel. Some people didn’t understand my many different areas of work, but I kept going. They’d say I needed to focus on one thing or another. I need all of them. Right now, I’m so done with being boxed in, labeled. Artists should be able to work however they want. I want to explore intersections and make new connections through the processes, which include, first and foremost, my life”.

“Empathy is everything to me. I feel things so deeply”, the artist continues. My psychologist, psychiatrist, and therapists have all told me in different ways that this is my superpower and also my Achilles’ heel. Empathy means that I can see others and create from those spaces. Kindness goes right alongside this. I have experienced more pain, meanness, and loss than anyone should in a short time. I lived with panic attacks, insomnia, depression, and as a result of a shit-ton of inner work—meditation, medication, you name it—I am on the other side now. Being able to feel the light and energy now makes me even more empathetic. I want to help others and encourage healing through my art”.

These words immediately reveal the key to her work: an art born from lived experience, introspection, and the desire to connect her own story with that of the viewer. Laurie Victor Kay doesn’t just tell images; she tells stories of lives, emotions, fragility, and resilience, making authenticity the beating heart of each of her works.

You began with commercial/editorial photography: how has this experience influenced your artistic vision?

The lens of the commercial and editorial photographic world shaped my views in many ways. I understand the fine line between what is “called art” and what is commercial. I am extremely aware of artists who have walked the line between the two worlds. I have worked more than half my life in this world myself. I’ve seen the invention of digital photography from analogue; I’ve seen Photoshop take over retouching by hand on negatives, and now AI. I have to say this shaped me the most profoundly.

What is real, what is expected of women, and beauty ideals have shaped me. The selection of models (who are represented), how commercial images make people feel, how images are used to sell products, ideas, and the pure persuasiveness of a beautiful image to evoke something, whatever it is. My work commercially was always an attempt to elevate and inspire.

I loved this, whether it was working with an opera company to create visuals for their season campaign, a small designer trying to present their fashion, or a high profile person seeking a portrait that was unique. What sells and what people respond to are fascinating to me. I love the psychology of this.

In the projects “Pathos” and “Apothecary,” the body and identity intertwine with everyday and symbolic objects. Can you tell us about the creative process behind these works?

Pathos and Apothecary were created during a time in my life that was upside-down. I’m still looking back right now on the how of this creative experience because they came in two different ways. Apothecary began around 2010, when I was a younger mother. I saw the first wrinkles appear on my face and felt women judging one another through handbags and status.

There was so much pressure. I also had medical diagnoses that came from doctors; anxiety was one of them. The pill bottles I collected represented something else to me, humanlike. What if the prescription was about family dysfunction? What if I started examining my everyday world like my commercial practice with slick, glowy, sexy images of these mundane items?

It’s about the body and identity. The body is extremely important to me. As a young woman, I struggled with eating disorders, as did my late mother, whom I was extremely close to. I saw the body and felt the body my entire life. I became very aware of my identity in my past marriage as well. Female identity was also extremely important in my life.

My mother raised five children alone. She was a warrior and broke stereotypes, leaving a legacy. She died during my creation of Pathos and Apothecary. I know she would love this work.

How did the collaboration with the Healing Arts program at UNMC come about? What fascinated you most about this dialogue between art, science, and healing?

In 2016, I received a commission to do a multi-work installation for a very large new UNMC orthopedics building. My vision was one of hope and possibility, creating landscapes from cancer cells and bright abstractions from broken bones. I was asked to become involved with a new Healing Arts Board over seven years ago. At the time, it was part of the Buffett Cancer Center at UNMC/Nebraska Medicine. Since that time, I’ve seen the program grow statewide. ART HEALS.