Profile: Kristy Evans

On a quiet summer afternoon, local artist Kristy Evans struggles with the shadows in a new painting. The pursuit of art is often full of contradiction. In an abstract, the shadows don’t have to be real, but they do have to feel right.

“Making art is largely about learning to trust yourself and what feels right to you and your creative process,” said Evans, an Indianola multi-media artist who is this month’s featured member of the North River Arts Council.

Taking what’s right in the brain to the canvas can be a struggle. Sometimes it works and other times it doesn’t, but the canvas is always forgiving. What has been done can be painted over to compose a history that redefines what right or wrong even means to an artwork. This struggle is exactly what the artist signs up for, part of the joy of their process.

The journey for Evans is tied in many ways to health challenges from a mid-brain cyst that she describes as a “naughty kid who acts up sometimes.”

In 2021, she had brain surgery to alleviate blockage in spinal fluid flow. Now in 2023, the cyst is putting pressure on her optical nerves. These types of struggles work their way into her artwork. One piece that sold this summer was inspired by regaining the ability to walk Buxton Park post-surgery. While having to concede some physical focus, the struggle has contributed to Evans’ dedication to enjoying a creative life, spontaneous exploration, and following the intuitive sparks to see where they lead. 

Evans has learned painting by painting and, in some cases, mistake by mistake or, more optimistically, discovery by discovery. She has been a self-taught mixed media artist since the fall of 2019. Working as a high school English teacher for many years, she came to her art practice with many transferable skills, but art required her to switch from teacher to student, independent research, online courses from many different instructors, and learning from one of the best teachers of all: trial and error through a daily dedication to painting.

In September of 2022, she was selected as an Emerging Artist to exhibit her work at the Octagon Art Festival in downtown Ames. In 2023, she set up a tent at Art in the Garden at the Ted Lare Garden Center in Cumming, the Waukee Art Festival, the Bob Kling Studio and Garden Tour, and the Indianola Summer Art Festival. Evans sells a combination of original paintings and fine art prints. At each venue, she has also raffled a free piece of artwork that she ships to a lucky winner, a practice borrowed from Danish artist Ea Bodin after Evans won free art of Bodin’s through an Instagram drawing.

As for where Evans goes next, she says “I’m very interested in the changing environments that have been forced on me in the past few years. Going forward, rather than painting objects, I feel more drawn to the spaces between. I want the work to be interesting and have high texture elements, but I have to have the space between. I imagine my work will become even more abstracted and simplified.”

There is a reciprocal energy at play. Just as life inspires the work, the work informs life. Attending more community art events led Evans to the North River Arts Council (NRAC), which connects artists and in turn helps them reach out to their local communities. According to Evans, this discovery was as valuable as any on the canvas,

“I love hearing about the art journeys of NRAC members because it’s online but also an in-person connection point which is very important to me, and I am continually amazed and appreciative that the Warren County area has a group like this,” she said.

Community is vital to the artist who otherwise can be in for a solitary uphill affair. For Evans and her cyst, that naughty kid trying to shrink her world, art is an expansive remedy.

More about her work can be found at https://www.kristyevansart.com. More about the North River Arts Council can be found at https://www.northriverartscouncil.org.

Kristy Evans

Walk The Earth