Kayla Traxel is an eclectic artist who began with watercolor, captivated by its fluidity and collaborative nature. Specializing in portraiture and mixed media, Kayla explores beauty, identity, and societal values. 

Kayla's work explores the tension between beauty and imperfection, often disrupting polished surfaces with visible seams, rough textures, or fragmented forms. Through portraiture and abstraction, she examines how identity is constructed, dismantled, and reshaped by personal experience and societal expectations. Each piece carries traces of its own making, emphasizing transformation as an essential part of creation. 

Grounded in devotion to process, Kayla's practice balances precision with experimentation. Her ongoing series explore themes of self-image, collective memory, and the evolving relationship between humanity and technology. She uses physical deconstruction to mirror the ways beauty and selfhood are both fractured and rebuilt over time. By layering materials and ideas, she believes beauty emerges not from flawlessness, but from what is broken, repaired, and made anew. 

Based in Kansas City, MO, her studio is located at Zhou B Art Center, Studio #314. Use the contact form below for inquiries.