I’m Aaliyah Lew, aka Kenny Kay, aka the Sad Slut—officially Aiyana Lewis. Why all the personas? What started out as stage names for long nights in glitz and glam became my go to for every witching hour introduction. But much like everything else in my art, my existence, and the world in general, Aaliyah Lew took on a life of her own. My amplified confidence, creativity, and control coalesced into the girl who takes my observations and transforms them under her perspective to share with you. Ever the pensive hedonist, I’ve adopted the policy of  “Wander, Wonder, Ponder.” There’s so much to understand and so much to connect to. Hopefully my art not only allows you to embrace and relate to me, but also the subject matters that it contains. 

I was raised with an oil painter for a grandmother, a designer for a father, a general crafter for a mother, and a singer-songwriter brother. The arts have always been in my blood and in my walls. While I, too, was an illustrator, pianist, dancer, vocalist, and storyteller, I never thought myself a creative. Not in the ways they were. I loved using charcoal to overwork the details of reality, breathing feelings into pre-existing music, and entertaining friends and family as I recounted tales from my day. However, to me art was the creation of something from scratch, uninfluenced and original—a prevailingly false notion.