Kyla Zoe Rafert

Full Biography

Kyla Zoe Rafert is a painter and printmaker living near Amanda, Ohio, and is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, with residencies at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Women's Studio Workshop, among others. Her work has received national recognition by New American Paintings, American Art Collector, and Create Magazine. She received her B.F.A in Printmaking from the Rhode Island School of Design and M.F.A from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Set within a meticulously designed world of vanity, beauty, and abundant pattern, Kyla’s pieces often reference fairytales — the feminine and the sublime, hinting at the absurd. Playing into femenine and romantic notions of the peril of curiosity, the potency of beauty, and the inevitable fall of innocence, Kyla approaches her subjects as a puppeteer. But who are these women and girls? Do we envy them or feel sorry for them? The intricacy and detailed patterns evoke a carefully crafted stage rather than the happenstance of real life. We are moved by them, but we are not entirely sure why. The work tiptoes toward being defined as one thing…and then pushes us away, asking us to accept being right at the edge of meaning––thus, tempting us with indulgent beauty and acknowledgement of our compulsion to both deconstruct and idolize feminine tropes and archetypes.

Her work is psychologically driven and historically inspired. She creates highly detailed ahistorical tableaus that feature young women and girls in surrealistic, psychologically potent scenes. Her works are ultimately a treatise on the multiple, sometimes conflicting expectations society has and has had for women and girls, and the often confusing transition from girlhood, to adulthood. Her love-hate relationship with feminine ideals is a foundational theme of her work.

Kyla now lives on a 5 acre homestead in Amanda, Ohio with her partner and their two daughters. There, in addition to creating her paintings and raising a young family, she tends to a large kitchen garden, and a menagerie of livestock. All of these personal passions are a continual source of inspiration for her artwork.