Artist, Krista Fay

Krista Fay Fay Krista

If a philosophy essay were a painting, Krista would get an A. She takes complex ideas that most might grapple with over the course of 1,000 words and brilliantly translates them into compelling visuals that stop viewers in their tracks.

Written by Olivia Cohen Photography by Peter Salcido

kristafay.com Instagram kristafay.art Facebook kristafayart On a crisp January afternoon in 2020, Krista Fay mingled with community members as they passed through the doors of Art Ark gallery in San Jose. Most came from neighboring apartments, enticed by the flyer on the door: “Generate and paint your own symbols.”

As an artist-in-residence at Art Ark, Krista had spent the previous months creating an app that would generate icons. She divided a digital canvas into four invisible quadrants, each containing simple shapes like a line or a circle. Every time someone clicked on the canvas, the app would randomly combine bits of the shapes across the quadrants to create a symbol. This was paired with a random verb, which then completed the icon. With 13 million possible combinations, virtually every icon is unique.

That January afternoon, Krista’s app was finally coming to life. As people trickled in, they clicked through the iconographer program until they found something that resonated with them. Then, they painted it by hand on a small canvas and placed it on the wall.

Some participants took their icons seriously, while some made light. Some worried about painting it just right. Others recreated the icons with their own flair. But for Krista, the project was about more than the individual panels; it was about how they came together to represent the group as a whole. “I was trying to get the impression of a group of people,” Krista said. “I wanted to see if there were any patterns that showed through.”

For Krista, art is never just about aesthetics. It’s always about ideas. She uses her art to visualize complex concepts and communicate them in a way that’s approachable. “Even if nobody else gets exactly what I glean from it, I need to know why I’m making something,” she said.

Krista’s work operates as a visual philosophy text, leaving the viewer with more questions than answers. It can be hard to pinpoint exactly what those questions are, but getting viewers to think about something is always her goal.

Much of her work examines social media and life on the internet. For example, a favorite topic of hers is the mass subject from Hal Foster’s “Death in America,” which examines how large populations form tastes that are seen in objects or trends (such as viral TikTok videos). Another

Ashley’s Wall (2018), Oil on canvas, 36” x 36” (sold)

“There’s something you have to know about oils to use them. They’re more technical, maybe more time consuming, which I like to pair with the subject matter of Instagram feeds and social media—stuff that you scroll by in an instant, paired with this thing that you spend a lot of time on.” –

–Krista Fay

area of interest for her is the way that social media causes us to modify our behavior because we know other people are observing us (an idea heavily influenced by Michel Foucault’s panopticon).

Take her Sponsored series, which started as screenshots of targeted Instagram ads in which women’s heads were awkwardly cropped out of the frame. Krista imagined the frame continuing upward to reveal something totally absurd: a fish head. Part Instagram ad, part trophy fishing photo, the result is a completely mythical woman.

“Somebody took a picture of the Sponsored paintings at the Art Ark gallery show with this guy, and he held up his hands like he was holding the two fish. I was like, “You don’t get it, but that’s perfect,” she said.

In another series entitled Wall Mount, Krista uses taxidermy to make a point about what social media does to us. “Every time we post, it’s like this snapshot, this frozen-in-time, typically idolized version of ourselves,” she said. “So I just equated that to a stuffed animal. And then [I equated] the wall of social media and the wall of the taxidermy animal.”

Even in the materials she uses, Krista’s art is layered with meaning. She does the bulk of her work in oils but adds large pops of unexpected multimedia. From clean vinyl and acrylic details to collage and found materials, her art straddles the line between traditional and modern styles, thus creating a contrast that’s impossible to ignore.

Krista said that “there’s something you have to know about oils to use them. They’re more technical, maybe more time consuming, which I like to pair with the subject matter of Instagram feeds and social media—stuff that you scroll by in an instant, paired with this thing that you spend a lot of time on.”

For all of her thought-provoking subjects, at the end of the day, Krista’s work owes its success in part to the expertise of her technique. Though she stays “scary busy” through a combination of private commissions, gallery shows, teaching gigs, and graphic design work, she still makes time to practice painting just for the love of it. “I do a meditative practice in painting that’s totally different from my conceptual work,” she said. “I like to set up a still life. I’ll paint a bowl of fruit.”

Despite her thoughtful criticisms of social media and mass tastes, Krista isn’t a hater. She recognizes the irony of moving from Texas to San Jose two years ago and getting a job at the Pacific Art League just minutes from Mark Zuckerberg’s house and describes it as “the perfect fit” for her subject matter.

“Social media isn’t just showing the best parts of peoples’ lives. It’s a totally different reality that’s being displayed,” she said. “We have to be social media literate to know that our lives aren’t going to reflect what we post.” C