American-born artist, Kimberly J Randall uses colour and texture to portray a captivating sense of depth, movement and atmosphere in her latest collection of paintings, Lost Landscapes. By doing so her work embodies an ephemeral ambience and mood that references unknown places, designed to be ambiguous and intriguing; evoking a strong sense of nostalgia. They are indistinguishable yet somehow familiar, creating an overall allure and mystery. This process speaks perfectly to the format of memory.
Randall envisages each work as a nostalgia-fueled memory, her colours and textures incongruity with a sense of familiarity. Techniques involving blending, layering, subtracting – and even photographic transfers – achieve stunning atmospheric effects. Through a repeated process of building and burying, collisions between materials are to some extent orchestrated, but there is also a pervading element of chance and unpredictability.
At its core, Randall’s work conveys the complexity of moments – colours, movement, half-recalled or uncertain places. She sees each of her paintings as having a strong but obscure sense of light and atmosphere; one which she explores through her intuitive process, between layers of media and the tensions they create.
In anticipation of her new series Lost Landscapes, I caught up with the artist to discuss in detail her practice as well as her latest collection of works:
How did you become involved in creating art?
I always felt that art is powerful and important. It makes the world different in some way; it is positive and communicative, in a world that has such negativity within it. I have always been drawn to the idea that an artistic direction in life can redress in some way the blankness and mediocrity of it all. I find it all at once interesting and inspiring and challenges my ways of seeing and thinking. The imagination is our most powerful tool and if we use it, we grow and expand. By making things and showing them to other people we connect, we turn ourselves into companions and collaborators. And this is where the unexpected and unseen exist and the world becomes more interesting.
Can you tell us about your latest collection of works, Lost Landscapes?
This show marks an important point for me and Cadogan Contemporary, who have been there since the beginning. It is our third show together and there is a certainty and solidity to the works that have grown over the last year. The work’s voice is less faltering and less ambiguous and the show is held together by more substantial threads and common ideas such as the passage of time or the Harold Pinter idea that underneath what is being said, something else is being said. These works explore the overlapping of past and present, a sense of travelling with no clear destination.
How would you describe your artistic practice?
Perhaps my work is characterised most interestingly as an erratic method, exploring a process of making that reminds the viewer of visual interpretations while focussing on the act of looking and connecting. My practice is driven by change and chance, unplanned directions, and a belief in the power and poignancy of the unexpected. I like vanished things, accidents on purpose, heading nowhere and suddenly finding somewhere I didn’t know existed.
There is something inherently poignant about the painting process; maps of lost moments. The colours and marks in my work always seem to be shifting. Painting is an artefact of the here and now as well as the then, which is vanishing continuously. I am always losing something in a painting, I lose other futures and moments; destinations are lost as others are arrived at or recalled. These works are presences and absences at that same time.
What is a typical day (or night) in the studio like for you?
My days are long and fueled by coffee and music. Some days are like fast-flowing water, some are stuttering and staccato, some are frustrating, and some are cloud nine. I love all sides of it and recognise the privilege it is to spend my time in this way. I don’t see it as a job at all – it is more of a necessity and compulsion.
Could you share with us some further details regarding your recent painting named ‘Forest Fog’?
This particular work is a keystone painting within this collection, but also in a wider sense. It seems to capture the significance of a moment in time, realising what is essential and important. The atmosphere in this painting is both simple and complex, moving and still, poetic and powerful at the same moment. There is already a new body of work emerging and developing in the studio because of this painting. . . but that is for another time.
Why do you choose this style to work in?
My motivation to paint is internal and instinctive. It is my way to express what words fail to. Because of the abstract nature of my content, it only makes sense that I also work in an abstract and expressive style. I often find the most powerful and evocative works of art to lack literal translation and instead express something distinctly human and inexplicable.
What do you hope audiences will take from your work?
The whole reason for making these paintings is to engage with other people, to allow them to connect. Each work is a moment – a place, a feeling, an ambience that influences the ways in which we look, interpret and remember. Underneath what is being said, something else is being said – a language of undercurrents to be felt and sensed rather than read, based on intrigues and whispers. These hooks slow down the way we look at paintings, extending the experience of perception until looking becomes a different connection. The best paintings I think, nurture you from looking, into feeling.
Words by Mercedes Olivia Davey
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