There are some artists whose work you simply look at, and then there are artists whose work make you feel understood before a single word is ever spoken. The first time I came across KYRIANNA’s work, I immediately felt that second experience.
Her paintings do not simply portray chronic illness in a literal sense. They translate it emotionally. Viscerally. They capture the quiet, invisible realities so many people living with chronic illness struggle to explain to the outside world every single day.
Working primarily in surreal watercolor and mixed media, KYRIANNA creates deeply personal portraiture centered around chronic pain, disability, identity, psychology, and the emotional experience of living inside a body that no longer feels predictable.
Born and raised in rural Wisconsin, KYRIANNA is an internationally recognized artist whose work is deeply informed by her own experience with chronic pain and disability. After developing a debilitating chronic pain condition at just twelve years old, art became more than creativity. It became survival and language for experiences too overwhelming, isolating, and complex to put into words.
Over time, that deeply personal relationship with pain evolved into something much larger: a mission to help others living with chronic illness feel seen through collaborative portraiture and emotionally symbolic work.
What makes her practice especially compelling is how profoundly human it feels. Her work is not created from observation alone. It comes from lived understanding. You can feel that emotional honesty immediately when standing in front of her paintings. There is intimacy in them. Tension in them. Vulnerability in them. They invite viewers into emotional spaces that are often hidden beneath the surface of illness.
Roots weaving through skin. Organic growth overtaking the body. Butterflies, insects, florals, and surreal biological forms becoming metaphors for grief, inflammation, exhaustion, resilience, fear, femininity, and survival. Each piece feels suspended somewhere between beauty and discomfort, softness and destruction.
In many ways, her work accomplishes something medicine and language often cannot. It gives pain a visual form. That is part of why so many people connect to it so deeply.
One of the hardest parts of living with chronic illness is invisibility. The endless explaining. The constant minimizing. Trying to articulate suffering that cannot always be physically seen. Trying to convince people your body is struggling while outwardly appearing “fine.”
KYRIANNA’s work refuses to let those experiences remain invisible.
Her portraiture process itself is deeply intentional and collaborative. Rather than simply painting subjects from the outside looking in, she works directly with individuals living with chronic conditions through conversation, emotional reflection, and guided visualization. The resulting works feel less like portraits and more like emotional testimonies. Visual manifestations of experiences that are so often dismissed or misunderstood.
There is also something incredibly important about the way she approaches chronic illness through an artistic and emotional lens rather than solely a clinical one. Her work allows space for contradiction. Beauty and grief existing together. Strength and exhaustion existing together. Identity, rage, femininity, vulnerability, and resilience all occupying the same frame at once. That kind of storytelling matters deeply.
At FLARE, we speak often about visibility. Not performative awareness, but emotional visibility. The kind that allows people to feel recognized rather than dismissed. Understood rather than overlooked. That is one of the many reasons KYRIANNA’s work resonates so powerfully with our mission.
As FLARE continues to grow, I am incredibly grateful that she is helping shape it alongside us. Beyond her work as an artist, KYRIANNA is also part of the FLARE team, holding a leadership role helping guide and manage our inaugural exhibition as we continue building this space and community together.
I am very excited to share that her artwork will also be included in FLARE’s inaugural exhibition this fall in New York City.
Honestly, I cannot imagine a more fitting artist to be part of what we are creating.
This is exactly what FLARE is about. Turning invisible experiences into something seen. Turning pain into expression, and reminding people that their stories deserve to take up space too.
Keep creating, keep healing💛
-Priscilla
