Once you understand a few things about Laurie Victor Kay, her affinity for a giant cork tree in southern Portugal isn’t surprising. The soaring spirit and heavenly reach of The Whistler Tree, the subject of a deeply felt piece of photographic art she created (below), align with her seeker persona. And like the massive tree, said to be the most productive of its species, Victor Kay is a prolific artistic entrepreneur.

Without pushing the analogy too far out on a limb, there’s also the tree’s deep scarring, the result of regular cork harvestings over its 240-year lifetime. At age 54, Victor Kay proudly bears her own scars, reminders of a hard-fought quest for equanimity.

With a star-studded client list and robust international following, Victor Kay embraces photography, painting, drawing, 3D imaging, holography, digital installation, and large-scale projection mapping. A native of Minneapolis, Victor Kay’s childhood was steeped in the arts. Her late mother, a community arts advocate whose Omaha home Victor Kay has repurposed as her studio and residence, encouraged her daughter to paint, draw, and act.

HOME ALONE

When it came to a career, Victor Kay envisioned a future in law or international affairs. That vision morphed, however, as she amassed post-college art experiences and instruction in Europe and at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the city’s Columbia College, where she earned a BFA in photography. While in school she assisted a photographer who owned one of the country’s first digital galleries. It felt like a fit. Victor Kay moved home to Omaha, opened her own photography studio and later collaborated with a photographer who became her husband and business partner in Laurie and Charles Photographs. The commercial and advertising business they built was known for high-visibility work—commissions for Fortune 500 companies and celebrity portraits. They also did editorial work for publications such as The New York Times and Travel + Leisure.

The couple’s marriage and business partnership ended in 2024 and marked the beginning of a period of personal and professional transformation for Victor Kay—not an easy, neatly-ordered change, but a slow, painful dissolution and recalibration, she recalls. “Lots of cathartic, seismic changes happened in a short time—leaving my marriage and business collaboration, my mom’s cancer and death, the loss of several other family members, and two hand surgeries,” she says. Despite the challenges, or perhaps because of them, Victor Kay experienced a surge of creativity, producing large-scale installations and multi-media series that reflect her response to inner turmoil and a sometimes unyielding world.

An example is “Apothecary,” a series she describes as “a paradise made of medication: a prescription for internal perfection in a dreamscape of drugs” (below). The work includes photographs, installations, and a digitized wallpaper featuring a pattern of DNA-like structures with strands made up of individual pills representing “an updated, artificial version of our internal codes.” In “Pathos,” Victor Kay places herself in front of the camera, blurring her image to explore hidden emotions using grit, grain, texture, ground glass, painterly blur, and multiple camera lenses (at top).

INSIDE OUT

Her ability to turn her inner world inside out gives Victor Kay’s work power and authenticity. That artistic fluidity has attracted a wide and diverse audience. Her art is featured in numerous public and institutional commissions—the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center in Omaha and 4 World Trade Center in New York, for example—and at galleries, art fairs, auctions, and personal collections in the U.S. and Europe.

Victor Kay calls her process “intuitive and non-formulaic.” Imagery enters her consciousness as through a kaleidoscope. “Like a color wheel, the parts inform one another and fit together in my mind,” she explains. “My practice is so varied and not typical of an artist who works only in one style.” An image captured in her camera (Leica preferred) may remain untouched for months or longer, only to emerge at the right time as the subject of one of her pieces. That gestational approach was the genesis of her work “Cork Tree Portugal.” Calling herself a “tree-hugger,” Victor Kay explains that she traveled to Southern Portugal to experience and photograph the iconic tree in 2022. She was bowed by its majesty and knew she would capture the tree’s sublime spirituality in a way that traditional photography had not. Two years later, the breakdown and re-creation that are the arc of a cork tree’s lifecycle spoke to Victor Kay, then amid her own return to emotional health. “I approached it in a Cubist, fragmented way, knowing that I wanted a very physical piece that spoke to how we can look to nature to communicate the idea of healing,” she says. “The piece came over time, and now I’m doing a whole series of reconstructed trees incorporating painting, drawing, and graphite.” Her tree series and other recent works have garnered critical acclaim and connected with viewers. “That’s because I’ve put myself into them and shared parts of myself,” she explains. “I’ve been unfiltered with my artistic voice.”

Victor Kay embraces technology and says visitors to her Omaha studio, LDK Atelier, are often amazed at how “tricked out” it is. She uses Capture One for editing raw files and Adobe Photoshop for her digital work. The studio is home to two large-scale Canon printers; she prints on Hahnemühle paper. Though the studio, established in 2024, exudes warmth and charm, there’s nothing loosey-goosey about Victor Kay’s approach to her craft. “My business practice incorporates the highest standards of both fine and commercial photography. Works sold on the fine art side retain their value as a result. For commercial projects, I charge for time, usage, and printing,” she explains.

GIVING BACK

A proud female entrepreneur with nearly 30 years of experience, Victor Kay generously shares her artistry and insights. For the past two years she has been invited to SCAD Atlanta as a visiting artist and teacher. Following her most recent visit, photography chair Josh Jalbert praised her as “an artist whose work reminds us of what it means to begin again, to transform, to heal through the act of making.” She credits her mother with instilling passion for giving back, and she is a devoted member of the arts community in Omaha and beyond. Among other service commitments, she is a member of the Healing Arts advisory board of the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

Victor Kay is currently creating another large-scale digital installation for a public space. She’s at work on a book and is collaborating with an historic Parisian handbag company that will incorporate her hand-painted designs into their products. To support this productivity, Victor Kay builds in time to rest, run, practice yoga, listen to music, and cook for friends. Luckily, the grace and self-care she now prioritizes for herself benefit those lucky enough to experience her bold art and unique voice. “I’ve come through suffering and healing using my artistic voice and business side, and I want to share what I’ve learned with others and encourage their success,” she says. “It’s about how we learn and grow in the world, while continuing to maintain industry standards.”  

Evelyn Sacks is an Atlanta-based writer.