Artist's Statement

My work is about awareness. It is about appreciating the fragility and beauty of nature. It is about evolution and our ability to change for the better. It is about beginnings and endings. It is about life, oneness, acceptance and love. It is about sharing a personal journey through the ocean. Light, depth, surface, space and color are the essences around which my work revolves.

My greatest challenge as an artist is letting go and allowing something to emerge from the depths. I employ the element of water because it is eternal and distinct, while having no definite shape of its own. Water is in constant flux, yet it connects all of us. We are all born of fluid. My paintings are poetic and meditative. They are meant to be viewed slowly.

Building layers of color through drips of paint that cross the canvas like waves of water, I construct surfaces that appear to shift in various lighting conditions and can be read differently over time. My intention is to seduce the viewer into a state of meditation.

Bio

I was born in Colorado, where I spent most of my childhood outdoors, hiking and playing in a boundless landscape that felt magical and timeless. I was raised in an artistic family and constantly encouraged to grow creatively. These formative years helped build the confidence in my abilities that would prove crucial for the current exploration of my imagination. For the past 20 years I have made my home in the vast and spiritual landscape of Northern New Mexico.

Press for Time and Tides

The Interior State of Water

Article from: Pasatiempo

On a Monday morning two weeks before Emily Kimball’s show was scheduled to open at Box Gallery, a forest of canvases was stacked against tables, walls, easel and chairs. Although they were all moody seascapes painted with translucent veils of paint and drips of grays punctuated with yellow, red, and blue, their texture resembled the fissured bark of giant logs. Their relationship to trees made their haphazard arrangement around the crowded studio seem just right. A small clearing in the center allowed barely enough room for the artist to work or for one visitor to sit. It mattered little that there was inadequate space to step back and view each work individually; together they created an environment that seemed out of a folk tale–a place where extraordinary transformation is possible.

Kimball grew up in Colorado and New Mexico and didn’t see the ocean until she was 8 or 9, when an aunt took her to Malibu, Calif. "I remember dancing when I saw the ocean," Kimball said, her face lighting up at the memory. "It was definitely better than Disneyland," where her parents took here on her next vacation. Kimball said she wanted to leave the theme park and return to the ocean. As intense as her memories of the sea are, Kimball said, she has spent only short periods of her life near any shore.

Kimball had already started this series when Michelle Ouellette, owner of Box Gallery, offered her a one-person show. She thought about staying at the ocean for a while and sketching and taking photographs, but she scrapped the idea because her seascapes are not about how the world looks at a particular time of day. Rather, they are reflections of interior states.

"When I’m by the water, there is something that switches deep inside me," Kimball said. "For me it’s all about evolution. Nothing ever stops; everything is evolving and changing. Water is moving through all of us all of the time."

Kimball paints oceans by letting paint thinned with watery cement drip the length of her canvases. For medium-size and small canvases, she has an easel designed to hold the painting in a diagonal position. Her drips cross and weave like tiny waves stirred by a gentle wind. Her first attempts to paint with the custom-made easel, built by a friend, resulted in failure; too many crisscrossing drips resembled a woven basket. Now, Kimball says she can pretty much control the drips.

Most of Kimball’s paintings give a suggestion of land, sea, and sky, but a few are composed of only horizontal drips, giving an impression of only water. Some recent visitors, Kimball said, were disturbed by canvases filled with nothing but the movement of the sea. "They wanted the horizon and the safety of the shore." She suggested they imagine being on a boat, but they still found the images disconcerting.

In Kimball’s four newest works, which were still unfinished two weeks before her opening and darker than her other paintings, ripples flow across the canvases on a diagonal. In one, brown and gray drips look like light bouncing off the saturated mud of a tidal flat. The tin washes of cement and acrylic, like those that indicate sky in Kimball’s other paintings, evoke the spray of waves crashing in the distance.

Kimball said she adds cement to paint because it pulls the earth in. It doesn’t just gray down colors; it is earth. "I can control the cement to some extent, but never completely."

Kimball has been painting consistently since she gave up a successful career as a furniture maker about seven years ago. "To pursue a fine-arts career, I completely isolated myself and played off whatever my instincts told me to do," she said. "I still isolate myself; I pull it in. One of my main goals is to put out there what is unique in me–in this part of my life."

"The layers of drips are rather emotional; these are very personal pieces. They are really my process of learning how to let go…They are about absolute surrender. One is tilted Love. It’s about letting go–not letting go of love–it’s about surrendering to love and not becoming neurotic."

Love, a study in soft greens and blues, is one of Kimball’s most lyrical works. Most of her paintings are infused with darkness that is scary but also rich. Without making promises that everything will be fine, Kimball’s seascapes seem to dare the viewer to jump into the unknown. Most give no indication if the water is 10 feet or a mere few inches deep. You might assume you are standing on firm ground, but perhaps you just failed to notice that you are already in over your head.

Chaos, change, and accepting even the dark sides of her personality, Kimball said, have led her to confidence and decisiveness. "I have a place where I let myself experience sadness and anger; I used to put my boxing gloves on because I wanted to step into a ring and fight sadness and anger," she added while making a gesture toward the canvases leaning against every surface in her studio. "This is moving through it, not fighting it. If I want to be dark, I’m going to be dark. If I want to be angry, I’m going to be angry."

Elizabeth Cook-Romero

THE magazine, December 2006
Southwest Art, December 2006

2007

CURATOR

Tesuque Village Market
Tesuque, NM
July 2007 - Ongoing

BOX GALLERY

Time and Tides
Solo Show, Ongoing
Santa Fe, NM

2006

SALON MAR GRAFF

July 2006
Tesuque, NM

GALLERY ZIPP

10th Anniversary Invitational Show
June 2006
Glorieta, NM

JACK FISCHER GALLERY

ongoing
San Francisco,CA

GALLERY ZIPP

Annual Book Show
March 2006
Glorieta NM

2005

Niman Fine Art

Guest Exibition, 2005
Santa Fe, NM