Laurie Victor Kay is a fearless artist whose work turns personal struggle into striking, immersive art. In her latest series, Apothecary, she transforms pill bottles, prescriptions, and handwritten notes into luminous, surreal landscapes that explore vulnerability, mental health, and the pressures on women to appear “well” at all times. We spoke with Laurie about her creative journey, the evolution of her multidisciplinary practice, and how she channels pain, honesty, and bravery into work that is as intimate as it is visually captivating.
Hi Laurie, how are you? Tell us a bit about yourself and your art:
I’m a kind, intuitive, and brave artist who made seismic life changes with intention, choosing myself in a dire situation. I knew I had to leave or my soul would die, maybe parts of it already had. I fought through more tests than I can count to arrive exactly where I am, and I’m proud as fuck of that. Through this process, I’ve learned to give myself permission to be honest and raw. I’ve earned it.
I’m a survivor of many things and braver than I ever expected. The past six years brought more pain than a lifetime, shaping who I am now, and for that, I’m deeply grateful. I walked away from a comfortable, seemingly perfect life and a 25-year collaboration to start from scratch. During that time, I lost my mother, my dog, and more than I can write about yet. I’m adventurous and drawn to the unfamiliar. My work spans decades, beginning with self-portraits, large-scale blue paintings, and psychological landscapes, a place my practice has returned to again. I’m expanding into writing, performance art, and video.
Your practice spans photography, painting, installation, and digital media—how do you decide which medium to use for a particular idea?
The project often dictates the medium in an organic way. That said, photography is often at the base of many of my projects. Forgive the pun, but it truly is my lens to the world. I honestly find the camera one of the best ways to distill ideas. I often find myself incorporating several media in my studio. At times, it feels like I have a lot going on at once, but somehow things come together. I describe my process like a color wheel with all these compartments of opposites that fit together in my head somehow. I have this painting that was the simplest iteration of the letter X. It became a print, then another medium, later sculptural and also part video. I love x’s.
Many of your works explore the surreal and psychological landscapes. What draws you to these themes?
I’m drawn to psychological landscapes because art is an escape for me; it’s where I go, from wanting inspiration to seeking solace from a panic attack. I have always looked to the outer world to make sense of my own inner world. This brings surrealism into play. I grew up with a few Surreal works by Salvador Dali that my mom loved. I never realized how important one of his works would become to me decades later. Was it subconscious or just a coincidence? I will never know. I do know that escapism is so important to me, and that art has given me the freedom to do so. To escape from the everyday, to remember who I am, to be in total awe of the world we live in. My work is often saturated beyond realism, but I want the viewer to experience it as something real. Each piece becomes a meditation, a way of exploring and responding to questions I’m working through internally
Apothecary presents this fascinating dreamscape of medication. What initially sparked the idea for this series?
Initially, what sparked it started in about 2010 when I had a series of these really strange headaches that were like electrical shocks. An MRI revealed nothing. At the same time, I was prescribed Xanax for insomnia, or was it anxiety, or was it both? I’m joking a bit on that, though insomnia is not funny at all. I had pill bottles from my autoimmune issues as well. Originally, when I began collecting my empty pill bottles, I conceptualized them as human-like. What if each prescription represented a dysfunctional family? The timing back in 2010-14 might have been different, but importantly, I was different. I could never have created the work I’m doing now with apothecary without my current life experience. My life is art is life. I love this series so much. The more I share it with others and hear people react and feel seen, the more it makes me want to keep the project going. I have a number of big ideas for installing this series. Hopefully, I can find the right curator to help it be realized artistically. So much of what is in my studio is concepts for the big show. I have a ’50s song in my head that plays over and over. Stepfordwife fuckedupedness meets psychedelic future. Painted and graffiti’d pill bottle prints are met by orderly abstractions made from intense journal writing and pill bottles in rows. Oh, wait, I just answered a few questions…
The series balances visual allure with deeply personal elements, like handwritten notes and your own prescriptions. How did you approach this mix of intimacy and spectacle?
My journey inward and through art with this work has given me such freedom and purpose that it is less scary now to be extremely vulnerable with this apothecary work. I’m feeling rather brave these days if you really want to know. I have been through so fucking much you would not even believe it. Most people don’t. I’m standing up and typing sentences and alive! Seriously, I had so many days, months, years of darkness that using ‘spectacle’ feels right to me. P A T H O S was not performative in my video project. That work balanced what I started with the apothecary. The more fun spectacle, in which the artist sees themself as subject matter and can disconnect into a world of storytelling through real-life pill bottles and prescriptions that change as the artist chooses, feels so FREE. This is art for me. That idea that I can say something however I want. I have HUGE amounts of experience with mental health, depression, anxiety, feeling worthless, and feeling I couldn’t go on. Now, I see and feel great strength from what I have gone through. It propels me now to share and take risks with my work in new ways.
You’ve worked on both personal art projects and collaborations with brands and institutions. How do these different contexts shape the way you create?
I take each project very seriously, creatively, and feel the importance of bringing my A game to both personal and collaborative projects. The collaborations are special, for sure, because I don’t know the endpoint or what synergy might result from working together. That excited me. The intersection of two collaborators can really elevate the process. At the same time, personal projects are incredible to work on. Some of them simmer slowly in the background, while others find louder ways into my creative process. I welcome them all because each brings something integral to my practice. I want to explore sound, performance, and video production further. I also want time and space to spread out in my studio with a bunch of large-scale tree paintings. That sounds heavenly for 2026.
Looking back over your career, what has surprised you most about how your work has evolved over time?
The consistency of certain concepts, colors, and ideas that have continued to come through in very subconscious ways has definitely surprised me. I’m extremely intuitive when I create, but I must say I was surprised to see several decades pass with my a p o t h e c a r y resurfacing because it called me. I love this halfway point in my life (my grandmas both lived to be 99.97 and 103 years old! I’m 54 and have been a professional artist for more than half of that. WHAT MATH. What a way to look back. I am so proud of all of the work and my journey as a woman to who I am now.
