BIOGRAPHY

Kimberly Blackstock is a Canadian artist born in Vancouver.

She graduated from the Design and Illustration program at Capilano University in 1995 where she developed a passion for painting and illustrating.

After graduation, she exhibited her work throughout Greater Vancouver and gained gallery representation at the age of 24. However painting alongside her design career became a balancing act and when family priorities came into play, her studio time was eventually outweighed by her design career.

In 2012 she stepped away from her computer and picked up her brushes again “I knew I wasn’t being true to myself, I needed to create again in a more tangible manner”. She quit her job as a designer to focus solely on being an artist.

In the past seven years, Kimberly has become a passionate and prolific painter. Emerging as an artist known for her dedication to exploring and pushing the boundaries of paint application. Her palette is uplifting and energetic, and her work is full of bigger than life gestural brushstrokes and vibrant pools of colour.

She has created numerous bodies of work, both representational and abstract; exhibiting in group shows, solo shows as well as collaborations and publication as a representative of West Coast Canadian art.

“When you lose a part of yourself and make a life changing decision to gain it back, you become stronger, more passionate and more dedicated to staying true to yourself”

When not in her own studio Blackstock inspires and instructs people of all ages to find creative motivation, seek new ways of seeing and gain technical skills to develop and share their own creative vision.

ARTIST STATEMENT

In my painting I aim to capture the powerful vitality within and beyond the visual realm. Through a range of expressive methods—realism, impressionism, abstraction—my work attempts to evoke the beauty of the unseen, the beauty of what is deeply felt when witnessing
works of art.

The fulfillment I gain through my practice is above all about connection. I see painting as an imaginative activity that puts me in touch with the distinct feelings of my subject matter. Capturing this powerful essence ensures these immaterial sensations are shared. As viewers connect to the work and to each other, the world is charged with new energy flows.

My floral pieces reflect an instinctual attraction to a primal, delicate beauty. Colours and patterns meld and flow within and between flowers, especially in my brushless work, where boundaries dissolve through an impressionistic touch. The gesture is toward interconnection, as I relinquish rigid control. Elsewhere, tracing the soft textures of flower petals with light brush strokes in vivid white, I suggest the near-electric energy of these natural objects. My goal is to render and pay respect to nature’s tremendous force.

I am always searching for the right method to embody the purest forms of life’s beauty and energy. In this regard, my abstract work has been important, because it releases me from the strictures of traditional representation, freeing me to summon elusive sensations and mental states through the basic building blocks of visual media: shapes, pure-toned lines and circles; dark shadows and pale cloud patches; gentle wisps or strong formless marks. In some instances the canvas is a stormy or playful chaos of shapes and tones. In others, as in my chromatic drip paintings—which feature long, thin parallel lines of bright, pure colour—I revise the spectrum, welcoming gravity as a co-creator in drawing the lines of connection that bind us.

My genuine desire is that my work speaks allegorically of a life lived free of judgement and fear. In painting I have discovered a way to be alive to the world’s beauty and vitality, and I treasure the opportunity to bear witness to it through my diverse, evolving practice, so that others come to know it as I have.