Artist Statement

“…particle by particle she slowly changes….” (Tori Amos)

Kendra Kett’s mixed media work investigates the quiet, transformative processes of healing and renewal following personal loss, trauma, or core wounding. Through abstraction, symbolic color, and meticulously rendered detail, her pieces offer a powerful visual language that speaks to both individual experience and shared human themes.

Each work serves as a portal into Kett’s internal world — a synthesis of memory, emotion, and lived experience — distilled into form and color. Her art is autobiographical at its core, yet resonant with universal emotional truths. Kett’s art explores how healing manifests not only in sweeping moments of transformation but in subtle, cellular shifts — breath by breath, moment by moment.

Her signature use of organic shapes and vivid color palettes is inspired by imagined visions of molecular and cellular interactions — visual metaphors for the inner work of healing and regeneration. These abstract forms suggest an invisible architecture of change, a visual narrative of inner repair and growth.

At the heart of the work is an exploration of emotional duality. Many pieces grapple with the coexistence of seemingly opposing feelings: sorrow and joy, anger and compassion, loneliness and love. Kett’s art makes space for these tensions, offering a nuanced reflection of the emotional complexity often absent from mainstream narratives.

Color plays a central role in her compositions. Palettes are carefully selected to create harmony while allowing each hue to maintain its integrity — echoing the delicate balance of emotions and energies at play within the human psyche. This sensitivity to color and form, combined with an expressive yet refined aesthetic, results in work that is both visually compelling and emotionally resonant.

Each piece is a culmination of Kett’s internal landscape — a confluence of thought, memory, temperament, and intuition — emerging from a private space of introspection into a public, tangible form. The works are deeply personal, yet invite viewers to locate their own emotional truths within them. Her art offers collectors emotionally rich, visually striking pieces that speak to the ongoing human journey of healing, transformation, and self-reclamation.

“With each piece I seek to harness the power of the full color spectrum. I try to choose color collections that get along with each other but which still allow each color to show off individually.”

**All the Light at the End** by Kendra Kett
Watercolor pencils, colored pencils, paint pens, ink on watercolor paper
9 x 12

Color Meanings

Yellow: joy, happiness, the light that brings us energy and warmth

Pink: healing, love, friendship, caring

Red: love, passion, strength, energy, intensity

Blue: tranquility, peace, calm, truth, and water which cleanses us

Turquoise: calm, overall healing

Orange: enthusiasm, strength, vibrancy, courage

Purple: spirituality, transformation, wisdom, awakening, higher ground

Green: new growth, new beginnings, new journeys

White: purity, starting over, a blank slate, simplicity

Black: the void where everything begins and goes from there

Silver: reflection, hope, kindness, tenderness

Gold: the highest ideals, understanding, enlightenment

Symbolism & Themes

The dot. If you think about it, all things begin with a dot. Everthing. No matter what it is. So, the dot symbolizes origins and beginnings. Since everything has a beginning, the dot also references unity.

The circle. Because it has no end point, the circle represents infinity, timelessness, eternity, and all cyclic movement. It also represents wholeness, completeness, totality, and protection since it has no broken lines.

The circle within a circle, a dot within a circle. Concentric circles represent processes, systems, and interrelationships. The circled dot is an ancient symbol that represents consciousness and self-awareness.

The mandala. The word mandala loosely translates to circle and symbolizes unity, eternity, wholeness, and perfection.

Ribbons. Often depicted as elongated, sweeping, yellow strips or simple flowing black lines, these undulating ribbons stand for connectedness and support bringing structure to the composition as well as providing emotional content.

Gold & silver chains. Usually encircling an entire composition, these gold and silver chains of dots-within-circles symbolize protection and guardianship.

Gold threads & filled-in cracks. Inspired by the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery, called Kintsugi, by mending the areas of breakage with lacquer mixed with powdered gold or silver. Kintsugi treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise.

The blanket. A universal symbol for warmth, healing, comfort, and nurturance. Other meanings: protection, security, calm.

The cell, the particle. The site of all activity, growth, and change. The tiniest space of spiritual and physical transformation and yet so grand, immense, and life-altering. My versions of the “cell” are imagined, fictional representations.

The heart. Where everything about us exists. Our thoughts, feelings, ideas, wounds, scars, dreams. Our soul and spirit and animation lives in there. I believe we have two hearts: an inner heart and an outer heart.

Points of light. You CAN see in the dark. Light is brighter there. Everything that must grow & come to fruition starts out in the dark.

Portals, Voids, Black Holes. A space to return to when starting over.

“My art is highly autobiograpical yet imbued with universal themes. Each piece represents a seminal moment from my life story. I liken each of my art pieces to tender memories emerging via a vibrant visual language. Each piece is an amalgamation of every thought, emotion, preference, disposition, choice, conclusion, and overall experience that I have ever had. It all percolates within and then emerges from my private chrysalis into a more public tangible form on the paper.”

**Kendra Kett**
***My art is not about straight lines and neither is my story!!***
***Check out the Member Highlight story about me written by Katrina Smolinsky at The Art Center of Highland Park.***
***Find out how I went from CORPORATE EXECUTIVE to ARTIST*** ***here***!

About Kendra.

Kendra has 30 years of highly successful performance in the Business sector working with and supporting Fortune 500 companies across the United States with work/life solutions for their employees. She is an award-winning leader, businesswoman, creator, and mentor with a proven record of success and innovation in Operations, Marketing, and Sales, including communications & customer service, social media, press relations, collateral development, and finance.

She is a recognized Operations Expert & Entrepreneurial Visionary winning national recognition in customer relations, program development, diversity, community involvement, and business growth.

She is one of only 6 winners of the prestigious Jim Greenman Lifetime Achievement Award for child advocacy.

Kendra is a first generation daughter born to immigrant parents from Great Britain. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and her Master’s degree in Education both from distinguished programs at the University of Illinois.

She is the author and illustrator of a women’s self-help book and is a frequent public speaker and trainer. She is also active in her community with various charitable endeavors and projects.

Kendra is self-taught as a visual artist and has been drawing, writing, and making things since she was two-years-old. She has been a life-long creative writer and student of symbols.

She has surrounded herself with beautiful art and design since early childhood when she and her older sister-in-law started visiting The Art Institute of Chicago on numerous annual family outings.

She has been an avid art collector for more than three decades and has extensively visited museums, galleries, sculpture installations, and architecture across the United States and Europe.

Kendra has been working in the art industry for eight years and owns the Blue Moon Gallery, located in Grayslake IL, where she has an established reputation for excellence, professionalism, service, creativity, and innovation.

She is also a Guest Curator, Juror of Selection & Juror of Awards for numerous art exhibitions throughout Chicagoland, and is currently serving on the Board of Directors for the Chicago Alliance of Visual Artists. (To inquire about fees & schedule availability, text 224-388-7948.)

…Kendra’s art is an intersection of expressive fine art & graphic design sensibility featuring layered compositions, vivid color palettes, detailed hand-drawn elements, and bold, organic forms…