Lakeside artist Kiki Kaye creates embellished works of art that are being recognized in various international competitions.
Most recently, “The Plan,” a gigantic piece encompassing both sides of two hanging vertical panels netted her top honors in the 2014 sculpture, non-representational category of the American Art Awards competition.
Representatives from 25 galleries voted on the work of artists from 51 countries to determine this year’s winners, which were announced gradually in a California publication. Kaye was particularly pleased with this award after having received two second-place and a third-place award in previous years’ contests.
Kaye says that she has come to realize that she is best able to express her thoughts, feelings and view of the world around her through her art. While she wryly defines her genre as fantasy dimensional painting, there is a delightful interactive quality to many of her pieces that often begin with an acrylic background which then is embellished, embedded and impaled with a variety of recycled and found items needed to express her current mood.
Kaye recognized her own art ability as a schoolchild, but her parents urged her toward other fields of endeavor more conducive to making a good living. Because of that advice, or perhaps in spite of it, while still in her twenties she was one of Germany’s top fashion models. Later, while living in Monte Carlo, she not only met her husband, Geoffrey Kaye, she returned to art and began to seriously study a variety of techniques and media. That search for constant improvement has put her under the tutelage of English, French, Austrian and U.S. art mentors and teachers.
Kaye has received a heap of ribbons, plaques, letters and recognition over the years. Recently she received notice that she had been awarded an honorable mention for excellence for the piece she entered in the Ninth Annual Female Artists portion of the contest sponsored by the London-based online Art Addiction Medial Museum.
In November, she was notified that the painting, Your “Le Secrete en Musique,” was selected as part of the FAV15% (jury’s favorite 15 percent of the entries) in the October 2014 BoldBrush Painting competition. She is awaiting addition information that will reveal if her work will be featured in the online publication informedcollector.com.
In one of Kaye’s favorite pieces entitled “Ocean View,” an ocean-side cityscape sparkles with blinking battery operated lamp posts, tail lights, and illuminated clock towers. Meanwhile the thoughts and ideas of the population zip through the city via the encrustation of recycled computer bits and other found pieces that vividly reflect Kaye’s intense interest in electronics and technology.
“I love modern cities and their architectural designs,” Kaye says. “The people make the city so vibrant and spectacular. There is always movements which fascinate me in cities. Even the sun reflecting on the buildings and the night lights make a city sparkle like a huge diamond.”
Kaye urges viewers of her work to simply “listen” to her art work, which she says, “speaks for itself.”