MK Bailey: SIGHT

Artist MK Bailey is deeply inspired by her everyday surroundings, and incorporates them into her works.

MK created this featured work, Nostalgia Daydream, in the spring when she was deeply nostalgic for the time she had spent in college, living in close quarters with all of her girlfriends. “The scene is modeled after my room senior year,” MK reminisces, “complete with a poster of David Bowie’s Rolling Stone cover that was a fixture in all five of my rooms during my time in college.”

MK Bailey creates narrative figure-based paintings and experimental landscapes that reflect her experience of the world. She uses oil, acrylic, and digital mediums to explore themes of loneliness, nostalgia, and femininity.

See all of MK's work in the FlatFile here. 

Artwork credit: MK Bailey, “Nostalgia Daydream Details,” 2020

Birthday

This chair is from my first residency at Capitol Hill Arts Workshop in early 2020. It sat in the studio space for weeks, a piece of the set left behind by the in-house theatre company after their latest show, still waiting to be picked up and brought to its new home. You can find the chair silhouette in a number of pieces from the Fever Dream series I created in the five weeks I spent at the residency.

Artwork credit: MK Bailey, Me, on my 26th birthday (Feb 2020), 2020, Digital drawing on archival fine art paper, 11”x14”, Edition of 15.

I saw my ex

I drew ‘I saw my ex…’ near the beginning of quarantine, when the sources for my work were whittled down to whatever was present in my immediate surroundings. The flowers sat in a small glass jar on my windowsill, and as they wilted over time, I couldn’t help but notice their downturned heads mirrored the pose of the figure in this piece.

Artwork credit: MK Bailey, I saw my ex on Instagram, and now I feel bad (Mar 2020), 2020, Digital drawing on archival fine art paper, 11”x14”, Edition of 15.

TV Dinner

This drawing is part of a long-term project I’ve been working on - a mini-series using stills of Joan from the TV show Mad Men. I listen to a lot of media while creating (new albums, television shows, movies, podcasts, etc.), it all influences my work in some way.

Artwork credit: MK Bailey, TV DINNER, 2020, Digital drawing on archival fine art paper, 11”x14”, Edition of 15.

Video Games

I often have specific color preferences, so sometimes as a challenge, and to round out my palette, I’ll use the color select tool to find interesting colors in an image. Lucky Charms is a cereal that holds a lot of childhood nostalgia for me, and the color of the figures in this piece are inspired by the purple-gray color the marshmallows turn the milk.

Artwork credit: MK Bailey, VIDEO GAMES (May 2020), 2020, Digital drawing on archival fine art paper, 11”x14”, Edition of 15.