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“I am a hopeless daydreamer and love to create my own stories within my art. Ever since my childhood I have been attracted by the elements of timelessness and beauty that are created by light and shadow. In all of my working years I have been trying in vain to capture and hold some small part of these mysterious and vague elements in my painting.”

K.Y. Craft images appearing in serious articles have had the power to influence public opinion, and perhaps define historic events, by inspiring and provoking thought. Her art has been used for covers of prestigious magazines such as TIME, Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, Forbes, and The New York Times Magazine. Over one hundred of her illustrations have appeared in Playboy, National Geographic, Town and Country, The Atlantic Monthly, Cosmopolitan, and Psychology Today.

K.Y. Craft loves good stories and has illustrated fairytale and mythological books, as well as covers for science fiction stories by Isaac Asimov, Stephen King, and C. S. Lewis. Her work graces covers of books by many contemporary fantasy authors such as Ellen Kushner, Juliet Marillier, and Patricia A. McKillip. Psyche Weeping, from the book Cupid and Psyche, won a Silver Medal in the book category at the Society of Illustrators 39th Annual of American Illustration Exhibition. Covers for literary and mass market authors include books by William Shakespeare, James Redfield, Alison Weir, Isabel Allende, and Carl Sagan.

Several K.Y. Craft paintings were commissioned as posters for major opera companies. Turandot received a Gold Medal at the Society’s 35th Annual Exhibition. Madame Butterfly won a Gold Medal in the 38th Annual Exhibition in the advertising category and is now in the Society’s Permanent Collection. Other major opera paintings include Aida, Das Rheingold, Gotterdammerung, La Boheme, La Traviata, Carmen, and Manon Lescaut.

K. Y. Craft has been a guest lecturer at numerous institutions, she has received over one hundred awards for illustrations and her work has been exhibited widely in the United States as well as in a museum exhibit of her art in Japan. Her clients have included ITT, for whom she created Queen Elizabeth, which received a Gold Medal in the Society’s 29th Annual Exhibition in the advertising category and the Society’s Hamilton King Award. Craft’s work is in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian, the Museum of American Illustration at the Society of Illustrators, and the Cornish Colony Museum.

 

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