EKY artist finds increasing passion for art and the region after flood

WHITESBURG, Ky. (WYMT) - Each stroke of a paint brush means more to Lacy Hale than ever before.

After the flood, she was not sure art was in her future.

“There was a point where I was just like ‘I don’t know that this is gonna be possible for me to get back to, and I don’t know if I can do this anymore,’” Hale said.

The artist’s studio sat inside her husband’s business, Roundabout Music in Whitesburg. Now the building is vacant after the flood destroyed almost everything inside.

“You know to see all that work down the drain. That, that was heartbreaking,” Hale said.

Day after day, the community helped Hale and her family clean up, so many hours that she became emotional.

“It was most days, you know, I’d come in, in tears because all these random people. They’d come in just to help and they’d be covered in mud. The most disgusting smelling, toxic sludge you can imagine just to help us,” she said.

Once Hale and her husband got back onto their feet, they moved to an upstairs studio just down the road.

The Eastern Kentucky native knew her next mission.

“I made a design about Eastern Kentucky, and it really seemed to bolster people’s emotions and feelings about the, I don’t know, it got a lot of good feedback and I was like ‘maybe art is not so trivial,’ you know,” she said.

Now art takes on an even greater meaning to Hale’s life.

You can find her gallery, along with Roundabout Music and Addison Williams Photography, just above Brent’s Barber Shop on Main Street in Whitesburg.

Copyright 2022 WYMT. All rights reserved.