KERI KIMURA

Keri Kimura creates layered abstract paintings that explore color, chaos, pattern, time, and the subconscious. She studied painting at Smith College, the Glasgow School of Art, and the New York Studio School. Her work has recently been exhibited at Cove Street Arts, Katzman Contemporary Projects, Nahcotta, and Deanna Evans Projects in New York. Kimura lives and works in Southwest Harbor, Maine.

“Growing up, the women in my family could sew anything. Clothing, quilts, costumes, things with pockets, things with feathers. I was more interested in paint than fabric but I’ve come to recognize the similarity in these practices. In my paintings, I collect colors, shapes, shadows, patterns. I assemble them and weave them together, move them around, search for the places they resonate, like quilts made of pigment. It’s a process rooted in intuition. 

When you cut out the shape of a sleeve to sew a shirt, it isn’t shaped like an arm. It has flat sides and gentle curves. But there’s a sense that it mimics the body, like a geometric shorthand. For me, painting is a kind of shorthand too. A way to put a multi-dimensional moment in time into the flatness and stillness of the picture plane. What I want from painting is to distill my experience into a language that carries in it both an ode to the women of my past and a space that I hold for the transient moment I inhabit.”