Lori Nelson

KP Projects presents Heretic Beauty, a survey of women artists who are shaping and expanding the visual language of figuration and Pop Surrealism.

 Bridging traditional painting, surrealist imagination, Street Art and contemporary visual culture, the exhibition honors the fierceness, strength, and beauty of artists whose work has redefined narrative figuration over the past several decades.

Emerging from the underground and evolving into an internationally recognized movement, Pop Surrealism has long been associated with bold imagery, dream logic, cultural hybridity, and emotional intensity. Within this landscape, these women artists have played a critical and defining role, not as muses, but as authors. By pushing their practice into new psychological, symbolic, and emotional territory. Heretic Beauty brings together a dynamic group of artists whose work reflects personal mythology, values, and collective cultural memory.

Participating artists include Jennybird Alcantara, Allison Bamcat, Julie Beezy, April Bey, Camille Rose Garcia, Lori Earley, Tanya Haden, Samantha Harrison, Seonna Hong, Audrey Kawasaki, Kukula, Laurie Lipton, Junko Mizuno, Laurie Nelson, Lezley Saar, Miss Van and Hannah Yata. The works span delicate graphite and watercolor, bold and lush acrylic and oil painting, precise graphic line- work, and layered mixed media, with each artist building her own symbolic language that redefines notions of femininity, sensuality, power, vulnerability, fantasy, defiance, and transformation.

Rather than presenting a single aesthetic, Heretic Beauty reveals the breadth of voices within Surreal traditions, from gothic fairytale worlds and intimate psychological portraits, to luminous dreamscapes and mythic figures. The exhibition highlights how these artists use traditional techniques to build new visual narratives.


At its core, Heretic Beauty is both a celebration and a recognition of artists who have been integral to the evolution of the movement. By shaping its visual and emotional vocabulary from the inside, figurative painting becomes a site of imagination, resistance, defiance, determination, tenderness, strength and solidarity. It is a place where inner worlds and cultural narratives alchemize into something sharper beneath the surface.