Paintings With Soul

"The First Saturday in May," 36" x 14", the official artwork for the 2015 Kentucky Derby, acrylic on museum quality panel, in a private collection. You can see a short video about the creation of this painting   here . I was offered this job in June 2014. Clare Jett, owner of JettStream Publishing, the licensing agency responsible for the Derby artwork, googled "horse racing art" and found my work. She traced it back to my blog, found my phone number, and cold called. That's the actual truth. Also, she told me I was the coolest headed artist she had ever offered the project to. And that's because, when she first contacted me, I thought she was a prank phone call. There was no way I was gonna give the prankster anything to hang over my head. But after we hung up and I realized it was legit, there may have been some jumping about, jazz hands and screaming. Thanks so much for following along with my art journey, Please stay w...

I just went to send my (mailchimp) newsletter today, and I was surprised to see how many new subscribers I have - thank you so much for that!! I'll have to wait until Friday to send out my next note via them, as I'm currently over my plan's limit. Meanwhile, here's another equine painting from the archives. The colors here just ripple across the painting. It's a calm piece with a gentle presence. It's also cleated and wired on the back for a seamless look, or you may choose to frame it. "Present," 12" x 16", acrylics on a museum quality panel, $599 plus s&h direct to your door. I accept paypal, venmo, personal checks and payment plans. Please message me or comment below if you are interested - and thank you so much for following along with my art journey!!

"Eclipse," 12"x12", acrylics on museum quality panel, $549 plus s&h. I accept Paypal, venmo, personal checks and payment plans. Purchase inquiries can always come   to me . In honor of what should be Kentucky Derby Week, I am sharing my original equine work, which is something I've done this time every year since 2007. Isn't this painting something extraordinary? She's even prettier in person - the glazes shift and shimmer as you walk past. When I originally did this painting, shortly after the eclipse a few summers ago, a collector immediately asked for it. As we got to talking, she realized she would rather something similar to his piece, but larger, which I was happy to do. It gave me the chance to add personal symbols, like a firefly for each of her grandchildren, a butterfly and a hawk. It was profound getting to deliver the piece in person and see the space it was destined to hang. I can do the same thing for you with...

"Blurring the Lines," 11"x14", acrylics on museum quality panel, $499 plus s&h. I accept Paypal, venmo, personal checks and payment plans. Purchase inquiries can always come   to me . In honor of what should be Kentucky Derby Week, I will share some of my original equine work created over the years. This is something I've done since 2007 - celebrating one of the biggest weeks in horseracing (at least here in the states) by highlighting horses in art. It was extra special doing so in 2015, the year I was the official artist of The Kentucky Derby. Here's my blog post from April 27, 2015 , the day before I left for Louisville. But back to today's painting - this one has been in my personal collection for a couple years. I'm ready to let her go, though, to someone who's at least as equally in love with her as I am. (I can't keep all my favorites, because I simply do not have the space! and I've got something on my easel right no...

"Remembered," 11x14, acrylics and graphite on stonehenge cotton paper, $399 plus s&h. I accept Paypal, venmo, personal checks and payment plans. Purchase inquiries can always come   to me . This painting is a Celebration of Life in the midst of a pandemic; remembering our world (and rituals) while separated from core practices that connected us to each other. Thanks for following along with my painting journey, Kim

"Swaddled," 11x14, acrylics and graphite on stonehenge paper, $399 plus s&h. I accept Paypal, venmo, personal checks and payment plans. Purchase inquiries can always come   to me . I am thrilled to share that my online vendor is now offering facemasks printed with imagery of my paintings. These are cloth facemasks for everyday use - they are not medical grade. To order   please visit here . You will need to choose the album of artwork, then the individual image, before you see the facemask option (you can order other items there as well). Also, I am uploading   the rabbit paintings, what I am calling The Talismen series   to this same site. I'm not entirely caught up with all of the paintings, but I'm working on it. You can order prints, note cards and other items (like cell phone cases too and yoga mats). And I do have plans down the road to put a small book together - I appreciate your asking about that! Thanks for following along with ...

"Fragile," 11x14, acrylics and graphite on stonehenge paper, $399 plus s&h. I accept Paypal, venmo, personal checks and payment plans. Purchase inquiries can always come   to me . My strongest painting always connect deeply with what I'm feeling. Not sure why today in particular I was fraught with worry for the vulnerable citizens, but it was here in the studio alongside me, so it got painted into the piece. There's no such thing as an expendable life. And please don't turn this into a political debate. It is an artists job is to create work about their experiences/feels and make pieces that reflects their perspective of world events. I am merely doing my job. Thanks for following along with my painting journey, Kim

Detail from a special in process painting that's currently on my easel. Working title "Maelstrom," the entire painting is 18x24, of which this is about a 9" square. Purchase inquiries, including reserving this work in process, can always come   to me . I just wanted to share something sweet and tender with you today. Seems like we need more of that sort of thing lately. Enjoy! Thanks for following along with my painting journey, Kim

"Fact Checkers," 18" x 24", acrylics and graphite on Stonehenge paper, $599 plus s&h to the first asking nicely. I accept Paypal, venmo, personal checks and payment plans. Please   reach out to me   with inquiries or questions. This photo shows that there is some buckling in the paper - it will take a couple days for that to resolve, as the paint cures and the fibers dry out. I was so excited about this piece though, that I had to share it NOW. This is a breakthrough painting for me on a couple different levels. It practically fell off my brushes inside the last two days. They were looooooonnnnng painting days, but the good sorts of ones that motivate - they left me comfortably exhausted with just enough adrenaline to jump in all over again. Thanks for following along with my painting journey, Kim

"Baby Boy (Parker)," 9" x 12", loose study done in acrylics on gallery wrapped canvas, featuring a baby Thoroughbred, reference photo credit to   Linda Shantz , $199 plus s&h to the first asking nicely. I accept Paypal, venmo, personal checks and payment plans. Please   reach out to me   with inquiries or questions. Please also note the special pricing - I consider this piece a sketch, or at least sketchier (meaning looser, not of questionable actions) than my more finished paintings, so am passing that onto you in the form of an affordable price. This is my entry in the recent   Virtual pARTy hosted by Linda Shantz . Long time readers of this blog may recall that about 10 years ago, she and I would host monthly pARTys, where we would share a reference photo and invite anyone to work from it. We had a lot of fun back then, choosing the subject for the pARTy and getting to know so many new artists. Linda decided to resurrect the idea, which I though...

"Tempo," 12" x 12" x 1", acrylics on museum quality cradeled panel, portrait of one heck of a special dog, private collection (THANK YOU!!). Please   reach out to me   with inquiries or questions. Tempo's portrait was mostly painted via a livestream on my FB page, in   a session   I shared last week and   another sideways one earlier today . A third session stretched out over this afternoon, and I think he's close to being done. I've just   sent this jpg off to my collector for her approval - I see one tiny change (picking up the green in his left upper lift, making it a smidge lighter so it floats more so above the tongue), but she will know best if I've properly captured Tempo's larger than life goofiiness. It's not enough that my portraits LOOK like their subject. I want them to FEEL like them too. And while I work from a mess of photos, I could never know the animal as well as their family. Reach out to me   if you want to ...

"Mum," 18" x 24", acrylics and graphite on Stonehenge paper, $599 ($59/mo payments) plus s&h to the first one asking nicely. I accept paypal, venmo, personal checks and payment plans. I can ship now (via Fed Ex, utilizing their porch pickup) or, with a 50% deposit, hold the piece for later. Please   reach out to me   with inquiries or questions. Did you know that rabbits have been around for 4000 years? that they originated in Iberia, and the country name "Spain" actually is a shortened version of the original Phoenician name which translated to "land of the rabbits"? in 200BC ancient Romans built rabbit ranches with some difficulty, because the rabbits kept digging out of the enclosures. There's your history lesson for today. Now please enjoy this painting of rabbits whispering ancient secrets to each other. They know 4000 years worth of stories, so there's gotta be some good ones to share. Thanks for following along with m...

"The Ancient Ones," 12" x 12", acrylics and graphite on museum quality panel, $449 ($49/mo payments) plus s&h to the first one asking nicely and from a proper distance. I accept paypal, venmo, personal checks and payment plans. I can ship now (via Fed Ex, utilizing their porch pickup) or later. Please   reach out to me   with inquiries or questions. It's rarely difficult for me to title my paintings, particularly when I'm working with in a series. I think I'm at least 10 pieces (2 months) into the rabbits, and I'm still not entirely sure what these paintings are about. So I asked my Oracle Cards the other night what the rabbits meant. I pulled The Ancient Ones card, representing shamans of old who defeated death and escaped time. The Ancient Ones counsel and invite us to reach to the future and birth a new destiny. How's that for some mid-pandemic direction? Rather fitting, isn't it? I didn't have much of a painting mojo this aft...

"Abundance," 9" x 12", acrylics and graphite on museum quality panel, $399 plus s&h to the first one asking nicely and from a proper distance. I accept paypal, venmo, personal checks and payment plans. I can ship now (via Fed Ex, utilizing their porch pickup) or later. Please   reach out to me   with inquiries or questions. I will be honest, it's been hard finding my mojo at the easel. Particularly the last 5 days. I've cut myself off from the news and seriously limited social media time and tried very hard to keep my hamster brain from running on the wheel of anxiety. This morning, though, I knew I had to jump in and do a painting for myself or else this whole deer-in-the-headlights thing might atrophy. It's one thing to work on a portrait, I think, because I've done so many of them and the decisions are mostly made based on likeness. But these paintings with the rabbits, they come from a deeper place inside me, and often require coaxi...

In   today's #journalthroughit class , students made spirit animal totems using mixed media and inspiration from treasures found during a visual scavenger hunt. Don't know about the online experience called #journalthroughit? here's the Cliff Notes version: art journaling lessons, all ages, all levels (from non-artist through to accomplished), no special materials needed, family friendly, and free ( donations welcome ). Content is live streamed via Facebook ( mine   and   Ardith Goodwin's ), will be archived for a week, and is delivered Monday-Friday. We are two weeks in, but you can jump in at any time and do the lessons in whatever order you wish. Additionally, I challenge you to take   the stencil/templates   from today's class and do something totally unexpected and creative with them. Puppets (and a videoed performance), 3D dolls, other layers in your journal - use your noggin and come up with something really, really good. Next session wil...

Credence, 18" x 24", acrylics and graphite on stonehenge paper (will need to be framed and set behind glass), $599 plus s&h when completed. I accept paypal, venmo, personal checks and payment plans - inquiries may always come   to me , and thank you so very much. I struggled with this one, quite a bit.She's been around for about 2, maybe 3 weeks now. She started out all pink and happy, and then about a week ago got very, very dark. This morning I thought about setting her aside until our world seemed a bit brighter, but then I thought, nope. It is my job to paint what I'm feeling right now, and if I did that, set everything aside to finish at a later date, I'd have no visual record of these week. So this is it, peeps. Yes, the palette here is different than my norm, but we aren't living in any sort of norm, so there. She really is wonderful. She'll be gorgeous on someone's wall. Thanks so much for following along with my art journey. Warm...

IN PROCESS Resilience (working title), 18" x 24", acrylics and graphite on stonehenge paper (will need to be framed and set behind glass), $599 plus s&h when completed. There is a little bit of paper buckling and glare from the studio lights in the upper left - the paper is pretty wet, but ultimately this piece will dry completely flat. I accept paypal, venmo, personal checks and payment plans - inquiries may always come   to me , and thank you so very much. I finally made it to the easel today, and painted something (that wasn't a journal page) that I feel pretty excited to share. The past couple weeks have rocked me to my very core, which I'm sure is a feeling many of you can relate to. Here in Michigan we are on our first full day house arrest, and today I seriously limited my exposure to the media/newsfeeds and focused instead on the things that make me happy. Rabbits, line, flowers, color, pop tarts. I taught   a #journalthroughit session   this morning ...

Above is a peek at some of the loose pages I've been journaling on while at my desk this afternoon. Ardith Goodwin   and I have kicked our online journaling project, #journalthroughit, off with live streamed content   yesterday   and   today . In our introductory segments, Ardith and I talked about our own journals, some favorite tools, and what the process could encompass. You also got a quick little tutorial on making your own book signature to journal inside. The fun continues   tomorrow morning with Ardith at noon eastern , and I'll step in on   Thursday at 10 am.   Each of us are doing our very best to adhere to this timeline, but as you well know, life may throw a curve ball or two. A reminder that the videos will be delivered via Facebook livestream on either Ardith's page or my own, depending upon that day's host. We are hosting content on our respective websites, adding active links to the videos as they are published....

When I stress, I may pull out my yoga mat and light a candle in a darkened room. I may eat an entire canister of Pringles and get nasty if someone suggests I share. If it's really bad, I resort to obsessively picking my cuticles until they bleed.  But I always, always reach for my art journal. I have been art journaling for about 18 years. What is art journaling, you ask? It's a combination of diary and sketchbook, where anything goes. The creator decides the balance of text vs art, and can bring any media they wish to it's pages. Journals come in a variety of sizes, shapes, bound vs loose pages. It's all about using what you have to express what you feel. Really, the only rule about journaling is that there are no rules about journaling. What do I put in my journal? I am a compulsive list maker, so there's plenty of those. I press flowers and tuck them into tiny folded envelopes of wax paper. Stickers from my morning banana. An overhead view of the ro...

"Vestry," 16"x20", acrylics and graphite on a flat panel, $599 plus s&h. I accept paypal, venmo, personal checks and payment plans. Inquiries may always come  to me . I think we can all relate to this image of gathering loved ones and standing watch. Also, wash your hands. And batman cough, people. Thanks, as always, for following along with my artwork journey, Warmly, Kim