Senior Exhibition — Kay Reyburn

“Threads of Influence, Threads of Care”

B.A. Studio Art Senior Exhibition Project, Spring 2026
Oil paint on canvas, embroidery thread, and scraps of fabric, clothing, quilts, magazines, music, and newspaper

Artist’s Statement

These mixed media portraits engage the ideas of caring, honoring, and remembering through depicting my grandparents, who have cared for me and influenced my interests. These portraits are reflections on how my grandparents have impacted my life and how the roles we play in each other’s lives have changed as we’ve grown older. Although most viewers experience mystery in these works by not knowing the subjects, I am intrigued by the mystery I also feel in that even though I have known the subjects for my entire life, there is still so much I do not know about them.

Painted faces are accompanied by collages of various fabrics and papers obtained from each grandparent that reference specific memories or influences on my life that I associate with that person. Each portrait also contains hand-stitching around the borders of shapes to further connect the subject, background, and various materials. The flat geometric backgrounds are inspired by quilts as a further incorporation of the interest in sewing that has been passed down to me through multiple family members, and because of how I associate quilts with family members, care towards the recipient, and memory or mystery of the maker. Similar to how a handmade quilt gifted from a grandparent demonstrates so much time, care, and intentionality, creating these artworks is a way for me to show my care in return for the care my grandparents have shown to me.

Process

I began by building four 16x24 stretched canvases at the end of fall semester, and collecting materials and reference photos over Christmas break. I narrowed down my reference photos so that they were all similar yet still individual. I adjusted the references to all have a similar placement and size of the head and to contain some presence of a chair, yet each subject has variety in their expression and profile angle. In making decisions throughout the whole project, it was important to me that the portraits would be cohesive together while still maintaining individuality.

At the beginning of spring semester, I started the portraits by gridding my canvases and photos and then drawing in the figures. I then painted a base layer for the faces using acrylic paint.

An issue I ran into involved obtaining reference photos from family photo albums for the portrait of my grandfather who is deceased. In the photo I chose to use for him, he was wearing a baseball cap, but for the sake of consistency among all the portraits, I didn’t want to include this in his portrait. I attempted to “edit out” the hat in the initial drawing and painting stages by looking at multiple reference photos as I was working, but had trouble making up the shape of his head and the wrinkles and lighting on his forehead in a way that looked right. I then, with professor approval, tried putting several reference photos of him into AI to generate a reference photo without the baseball cap. Although the generated photo changed his face to not look like him, it gave me enough information to reference for painting his hair and forehead.

After painting the faces with acylic paint, I made fabric selections for the clothing and chairs. I used tracing paper to make patterns of the exact shape to cut of each fabric piece, traced these onto my fabric selections, cut the fabric pieces, and pasted them in place for the clothing and chairs. (I used mod podge for all adhering in this project.)

My next step was to paint shadows, highlights, folds, and details onto the fabric with acrylic paint. I then used photoshop to experiment with different quilt pattern backgrounds and to plan their layouts.

After choosing a final background pattern and layout for each portrait, I made material selections for the backgrounds and cut and pasted the pieces. The materials I used were obtained from each grandparent and are items that I associate with them. Examples of materials I used include clothing from each grandparent, knitting and quilting magazines, pages and covers from voice lesson books, musical theatre scores, and hymnals; t-shirts, quilt blocks made by my grandma, quilting fabric, wallpaper, and newspaper.

Once the background pieces were cut and layouts finalized, I glued the pieces down and trimmed the center ones to fit around the subjects’ heads. Next I did a final refined and detailed painting of the faces with oil paint.

Using acrylic paint, I added black shadows around the figures to help them stand out from the backgrounds. I then selected embroidery thread colors for stitching and stitched through the canvas around the borders of the figures.

My last step was to select fabrics for the canvas borders, then cut and paste the chosen fabrics to the sides of the canvases. I decided to cover the canvas sides in fabric to reference quilt bindings, tie the images together, and have the paintings function more like art objects than framed windows into a scene. Finally, I installed these works in the Aughinbaugh Gallery at Messiah University for the 2026 B.A. Senior Art Exhibition!