Greenfield MA-based artist Kim White has been painting and exploring artmaking with water-based mixed media for over 35 years. While pursuing social services, the healing arts and nursing as an occupation, Kim continued making art to explore and reflect on the invisible forces behind the processes of reality’s emergence into the eternal present; and to simply get lost in the act.
Her first love and influence were the Abstract Expressionists of the forties and fifties. First, falling for the freedom of the action painters, then for the deeply moving spaces of the color field painters. Finally, Barnett Newman’s zips showed her the power of a single line to express a spiritual reality.
Other influences on her work include dance and physical movement. This is exemplified in her larger works where she uses rhythmic and exploratory movement to create the lines, spaces and shapes of her compositions.
The themes that Kim explores in her works are influenced by lifelong study of the esoteric arts and spiritual practices, inspired by and passed down by her grandmother – an astrologer and Theosophist. She has also been influenced and changed by the marginalized experiences of the populations she has worked with, including developmentally different people, elderly people with dementia, and the dying. She remains ever grateful for their help in bringing her into the present moment, the only time that truly exists.