About Studio KLY
Every project starts
the same way: I listen.
I've spent more hours than I can count sitting with a sketchbook in the landscape, getting to know the plants, the seasons, and the lay of the land.
My practice is rooted in Northern California, but my real subject is the landscape itself: the rugged beauty of the Pacific coast, the saturated color of small-town Mexico, the cool light of Quebec, a garden I'll discover tomorrow.
Over the years, I've painted on walls inside and outside homes, businesses and schools; installed mosaics on train cars and pizza ovens; and worked with DACA recipients, students, beekeepers, winemakers, and community elders, listening closely and finding the images inside their stories.
What I bring to every commission is attention and curiosity. I'm listening for the images at the heart of your story, and for the history held in each place.
About the name
K-L-Y are my initials (Kristina Lynn Young), and my family often called me “KLY” growing up. The year I had to swim the butterfly leg of my swim team's medley race, I was nervous and not at all sure I could. My dad gave me a nickname to race under: KLY the Fly. I started signing my drawings with it, and it stuck. The studio is named for that, and the butterfly has been with me ever since.
What I care about
Close attention. My best work comes from slowing down, asking questions, and noticing things we often rush by.
Care for the land. I consider materials, scale, and what gets made and why. I'm drawn to people whose work honors the natural world, regenerative farms, conservation groups, land stewards, and anyone trying to do right by their corner of the world.
Made to last. I make work that's right for its place and meant to be lived with for a long time, hopefully offering something to be returned to again and again.
Warmth without preciousness. I aim for work that holds humor, honesty, and feeling.
Studio practice
Between commissions, I paint for myself, in the landscape, in friends' gardens, and wherever travel takes me. This work sharpens my eye and builds the visual language I draw on for everything else, and sometimes it becomes the seed of a commission: a study made for the love of it that a client later sees and wants as their own.
Hospitality
and Wineries
Selected Clients
Farms, Makers
and Local Businesses
Alongside private collectors and commission clients across California and beyond.
For public art funders and civic partners, see Public Work