ANNOTATION
By Meg Kallman Feeley • Brooklyn New York • May 2014
Kim Kitchen’s work has always been centered on nature and its spirit. Her interests, as an activist and advocate on behalf of women, animals and the Earth, have seemed to mesh effortlessly in the reflections of undulating trees she paints like so many brown sisters, or the textured flesh of a leaf presented in a heartbreaking and insistent palette. Even her sculptural representations of women’s bodies in multimedia seem obsessed by the lines of natural form. Over the years, her work has drawn from the bush that surrounds the studio and farm she calls “the Swamp,” where she lives and works in Northern Ontario with her partner, Perry Kitchen, a farmer and registered nurse.
“#21 Blue Door,” a 2012 acrylic depicting a wooden door overgrown by wisteria in Ghent, Belgium, appears to be a departure not only from that North American location, but also reveals the artist’s stance – as the participant and observer. It explores the space between the traveler and what lies beyond the closed door. It marks the first of Kitchen’s work that explores the intersections between human beings and the physical space we inhabit.
“Winter’s Warmth,” from 2013, combines Kim’s fantastic intrigue with the tree line, in a surreal contest with a sky somehow overlaid with ice, and echoed in a wire fence and a post. What one assumes must be a grey winter scene, Kitchen’s view of the tree line explodes with color. Without any figural references, it firmly suggests the viewer in motion and perspective. It reflects back, asking about the relationship between humans and the natural world.
“Walk of Beauty,” a commissioned work completed in 2013, offers a close-up of Kim’s intrigue with the feminine shape of the natural landscape juxtaposed with the rectilinear framing of a found object – a refinished window.
A small work from 2014, “Ice Shacks” takes this interest with the intersections between humans and the environment forward, depicting three temporary winter shelters atop a frozen lake. The implications of human progress are prominent, in the small chimneys protruding upwards, and a sign advertising “GAS.” Signposts indicate the importance of place, and for the first time, insist that human beings are present, if not seen. Just what is it that fills the view onto a frozen lake dotted with ice shacks? Who is inside? Is it hot, or cold? What lies under the surface? How far can we go?
