Kay Hand: Color and Curiosity
Dates: August 12 – October 4, 2025
Location: The Arts Center West Gallery
This exhibit is a joyful tangle of color, mark making and motion. Letting the paint do the talking I create abstract works that are curious, carefree and perfectly imperfect. No instructions, no pressure—just a place to play.
About the Artist
KAY HAND Kay Hand is a Texas-based abstract artist who came to painting later in life with curiosity, courage, and a healthy disregard for the rules. A creative with a love for color, texture, and experimentation. Kay works primarily in mixed media, letting intuition lead the way. Her process is playful and spontaneous—more about exploring than explaining, more about feeling than following a formula.
Kay’s paintings often begin without a plan and evolve through layers of mark making, gestural brushwork, and joyful improvisation. The result is work that feels alive, full of motion, and just a little bit mischievous. Viewers often find their own stories within her abstract shapes and lines—a testament to her ability to connect on a level that’s emotional rather than literal.
Kay’s work has been exhibited and recognized with awards throughout the Gulf Coast region. She is currently a resident artist at Art Machine Gallery at The Silos in Sawyer Yards, Houston’s premier creative arts campus. Her solo exhibit, Somewhere Between Curiosity and Chaos, at the Arts Center of Brazos Valley in College Station, Texas, is a vibrant celebration of intuitive expression and artist freedom. In addition to painting, Kay enjoys exploring other creative outlets including pottery, collage, and assemblage. She’s also the author of 85 Things I’ve Learned While Aging Gracefully (More or Less), a lighthearted reflection on life, wisdom, and humor with age.
Kay lives in Fort Bend County, just outside of Houston, where she creates, writes and shares her work with a growing online audience. When she’s not in the studio, she can usually be found laughing with friends, enjoying the Texas sunshine, or being gently bossed around by her dog.
Artist Statement
I’ve always believed in the magic of letting things unfold. That’s how I paint— intuitively, without a plan, and usually with a bit of curiosity leading the way. I never quite know what a piece will become until it tells me it’s done.
The works in Color and Curiosity are playful, layered, and imperfect in the best possible way. Each painting is a moment of exploration–color meeting motion, texture bumping into line, quiet spaces holding their own next to burst of energy. There are scribbles and smudges, joyful accidents, and decisions I didn’t overthink. That’s part of the joy for me—getting out of my head and into the flow.
I came to abstract later in life, and I think that’s part of what makes it so freeing. There are no rules I feel bound to follow. No pressure to make something “real.” Just the delight of pushing paint around and seeing where it takes me. If you see stories or landscapes or emotions in these pieces, wonderful. If you don’t, that’s fine too. My hope is simply that something here makes you pause, smile, tilt your head, and maybe feel a flicker of your own curiosity.