About Lindsey Kiser
About Lindsey KiserLindsey Kiser is a contemporary visual artist, published illustrator, wife, and mother of two darling daughters.
In October 2024, Summerfair Cincinnati, Inc. awarded Lindsey “Aid for Individual Artists Awards”. Recipients of this $5,000 grant from the last three years are exhibiting their work together in the Summerfair Select art exhibition at the Weston Art Gallery, Aronoff Center for the Arts in Cincinnati, Ohio from November 21, 2025 to January 11, 2026.
In 2025, Kiser’s “Wondrous Pollinators” collection of scratchboard art was on exhibition as part of the Charley Harper: Birds & Beasts Exhibition at the Headley Whitney Museum of Art in Lexington, Kentucky.
Lindsey was inducted into Kentucky Crafted, a program of the Kentucky Arts Council, the state arts agency, which is supported by state tax dollars and federal funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. As a result, her scratchboard and ink on clay (2D mixed media) work is exhibited annually at The Market inside the Alltech Arena at the Kentucky Horse Park in March.
In April 2024, Lindsey was nominated by the board of the Friends of the Boone County Arboretum to serve her local community as its inaugural Artist-in-Residence. Prints of her original oil painting, Silver Jubilee Blossoms, honoring the arboretum’s 25th anniversary are available for purchase here and here. (Twenty percent of the proceeds of sales of Silver Jubilee Blossoms until May 2, 2025, will be donated to the Friends of the Arboretum.)
In May 2022, Lindsey was nominated by the board of ComposeArts to be the organization’s inaugural Featured Visual Artist. In 2016, the governor of Kentucky appointed Lindsey to serve on the board of the Kentucky Arts Council on which she served until November 2022.
Since 2018, Lindsey’s artwork has been exhibited in numerous solo and juried group art shows, as far reaching as Laguna Beach, Ann Arbor (the Street Art Fair – The Original), and New York City. (See Exhibitions). She is a member of and exhibits annually with the International Society of Scratchboard Artists.
Lindsey has illustrated two published children’s books, The Royal Red Bird, written by Angela Rice, and A-Z for Me!, written by Mitzi Adams, and has been commissioned by The Sporting Gent, a luxury sporting goods company, to illustrate game birds for home goods products.
Kiser earned her undergraduate degree in fine art with minors in biology and chemistry from Georgetown College. She studied 19th Century British art history under the late Ilaria Bignamini, a curator for the Tate, and drawing at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art at the University of Oxford in Oxford, England. Buying into the myth of the starving artist, Lindsey earned her juris doctor (J.D.) at night from Salmon P. Chase College of Law at Northern Kentucky University, while, ironically, supporting herself by painting murals by day.
To experience her work in person, please visit ADC Fine Art in the Cincinnati and Ft. Thomas galleries; the permanent collections of University of Kentucky, U.S. Bank in Bowling Green, Kentucky, and the Boone County Arboretum; or book a private studio tour directly with Lindsey.
Lindsey’s art studio is in her home in Union, Kentucky in the Greater Cincinnati Metropolitan Area.
Artist’s Statement
A creeping epidemic, framed as a widespread “hollow” emptiness, reflects societal disengagement from civil conversation on meaningful topics. Yet, we are in the same position as the sailors in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner: “Water, water, every where, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, every where, Nor any drop to drink”.
We thirst for beauty, meaning, and joy, which are abundantly available all around us, but remain unseen. Familiarity blinds our eyes. Rather than focusing on subjects from urban culture or an increasingly inaccessible wilderness, I select nature motifs from the southern American backyard as my subject. I place my highly detailed subjects within a simple, solid black background to create tension and provide visual relief. Common pollinators are selected to rebrand the familiar as fascinating. Each pollinator is presented as a metaphor to evoke wonder and contemplation of long-held beliefs from new perspectives. For instance, each caterpillar leaves just enough room around her head inside the chrysalis for her future antennae to grow. Thus, imagination goes ahead before reason.
My artistic process requires intense spotlight-like observation to see and understand how light hits every fold and crease of petals and leaves, and the shape, line, and texture of feathers and scales. Meanwhile, lantern light-like consciousness is required to capture accurately the whole of my subject within the greater context of its environment and to understand how the individual piece fits not only within a series, but also within the larger context of contemporary art.
Unlike traditional drawing, my marks are white, as the needle scratches off the black india ink of the scratchboard panels to expose the white clay underneath. Thus, I concentrate on where light highlights form. I leave shadowy areas black or with less marks.
If I am adding color to a piece, I will plan ahead and over-scratch an area to add in colorful inks and/or iridescent watercolors. The shimmering colors next to the matte black ink are reminiscent of traditional Japanese embroidery on black silk kimonos. The cycle of scratching and painting is repeated until each work is complete.