F5, Paintings by Laura Kimes


F5
Opening at Red Dot Gallery, Friday April 27th, 6 - 9 pm


Commemorating the Anniversary of the 2011 Tornadoes
April 27-May 25, 2012

Exactly one year after deadly tornadoes ripped through Alabama in one of the biggest storms in U.S. history, artist Laura Kimes exhibits a series of paintings representing the aftermath. 

A student of Red Dot Gallery for nearly 5 years, Laura Kimes has explored several subjects as a painter, but this body of work has been the most personal for her. After being encouraged in class to explore themes that hold the most meaning for her, she bravely investigated the theme of great loss, to which she is no stranger. The death of her husband 8 years ago left her and her 3 children devastated. Last year, while traveling in north Alabama, she photographed some of the storm damage, and related on a deeper level to the suffering of the victims. Her paintings spring from this emotional connection.


“It made me angry, it made me sad, it reminded me in a concrete way of the random and often destructive nature of the universe,” Kimes says. “I could see stories before me in what was left behind, in what was taken away, in the juxtaposition of those two, and I wanted to tell those stories. So I took many photographs and began exploring this subject and my feelings about it through paint. Often, the title for a painting would come to me as I was taking reference photographs. These images literally spoke to me in a way no other subject ever has.”
  

On an under-painting of bright red, Kimes uses minimal forms to capture what was left of people’s homes. Bold and straightforward without being overly sentimental, her paintings communicate the storm’s impact with the greatest simplicity. In choosing to paint the sometimes odd and out-of-place leftovers that tornadoes often leave behind, Kimes conveys the chaos and randomness of life’s most difficult surprises.
  

Comments

  1. UnknownApril 25, 2012 at 6:37 AM

    Beautiful work and beautifully described. Can't wait to see it in person!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Creek Village Painting

Image
"Italwas"   48" x 60"  2009 I painted this image of a Creek Indian Village as a commission for a collector. He lived on a hill above a bend in a creek where a Creek Village reportedly existed long ago, and he wanted a historically accurate representation of what the village might have looked like from his house. His home is near Talladega, Alabama.  I did months of research. With the help of the now late Miriam Fowler who worked at the Birmingham Museum of Art, I pulled together the image with references to the customs, culture, and village layout. I also used as a reference "Bartram's Travels" written by William Bartram, a detailed description of encounters with Native Americans in 1791. It is one of the very few bits of info about the lives of the Creeks back then. (As noted in Wikipedia, the original title to Bartram's book is:  Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida, the Cherokee Country, the Extensive...
Read more

Featured Artist at the ALCC: Chris Gryder

Image
The Alabama Clay Conference , to be held in February, 2012 in Birmingham (and hosted by my husband, ceramic artist Scott Bennett) will feature three well-known ceramic artists who will give all-day demonstrations and exhibit their work.  Here is the work of Chris Gryder, one of the featured artists. I've included an article below about his work, a piece I wrote for Ceramics Monthly magazine, November 2006. I'll blog about the other two artists in the next couple days.  Negative Impact The Work of Chris Gryder Chris Gryder began his exploration of art by studying architecture. A sincere and dedicated commitment to the subject led to his acquaintance with artists, methods, and concepts that later became the inspiration for his work in sculpture and clay. From the visionary designs of Antonio Gaudi and the philosophy of Louis Sullivan to experimental work in mold-making for architectural pieces, Gryder pieced together a singular aesthetic...
Read more