Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Thomas Whittaker Kidd. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Thomas Whittaker, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
DNA Bridge Transparency, white saviour, half wine barrel, get in.
These are my abbreviated thoughts about an installation I made that has four figures dressed in clothes found on
Dockweiler Beach in Los Angeles. It’s about getting together and talking while being in the same barrel.
Here is where you can see it:
https://thomaswhittakerkidd.com/sculptures-and-installations.html
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I came to art making through isolation and my propensity to watch trash sink into the toilet bowl after I dumped it in there. Being one of the odd balls in the neighborhood, a few blocks south of Fall River, Massachusetts, worked out well for me since I became my best friend. One Saturday night, when I was left behind, I drew a ballerina. I made this drawing around the time I attended a childhood workshop at the RISD Museum in Providence, RI. Here is where I notice that what I liked doing was something people really liked to look at, quite unlike the South End Fall River culture of survival that I grew up with. I spent the first three years in college studying Civil Engineering at the University of Rhode Island trying to protect my self from the poverty my mother experienced growing up in the housing projects of Fall River, Massachusetts. After my body and mind deteriorated, I realized I couldn’t escape being an artist. I moved to Boston to study painting at Massachusetts College of Art.
Now, being in Los Angeles since 1999, the ocean and art are good friends that nourish each other.
My first solo exhibition in Los Angeles was at ACME. Gallery titled Building and Dumping, my second solo exhibition in LA was at Carl Berg Gallery titled High Tide. My present solo show is up now at bG Gallery in Santa Monica, CA titled, I Could Float For Days.
In 1999 I began swimming regularly in the ocean beyond the breakers at Dockweiler Beach.
Being out this deep lead to a letting go of fear and a detachment from self while being surrounded by a seemingly infinite body of water.
Here I sensed that I am part of an infinitely large system of lives.
Thomas Whittaker Kidd is a Los Angeles based artist born in Fall River, Massachusetts, who exhibits paintings, drawings, sculpture and installations internationally. His solo exhibitions in Los Angeles were at ACME and Carl Berg Gallery and BG Gallery.
Kidd’s work was in group exhibitions at The Hole, Shrine and Lombard Freid Projects in New York, Western Exhibitions in Chicago, Angles Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, L’INCONNUE, Montreal, Canada, Galleri Golsa in Oslo, Norway and Gnes B. Galerie Boutique, Tokyo, Japan.
Kidd was curator of the exhibit, The Unruly and the Humorous, at Angles Gallery in Los Angeles, California. Kidd was also curator of Created Worlds and Altered Histories at JK Gallery, Los Angeles, CA and Dirty Minds: Life On Earth at BG Gallery, Santa Monica, CA.
He lectured on his artwork at UCLA, California Polytechnic State University and San Jose State University. His work was included in To Live and Paint in LA, at the Torrance Art Museum in Torrance, CA in 2012.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
Being an artist in a big city is really signing up to be a celebrity, if you are taking your self seriously which actually means, wanting to make a living. I don’t think I fully understood that starting out. Reading the lead review in the LA Times about my first solo exhibition in Los Angeles gave me the first indicator that I might be joining the club. People that I thought didn’t know who I was suddenly came up to me and greeted me by name. I sold one third of the work from this exhibit but it was not good enough to continue exhibiting at this gallery. I should have believed the people’s enthusiasm and my own eyes. I recovered a couple years later but lost some time. I’ve had three large exhibits this year in Berlin and Leipzig, Germany and LA, and am about to have work in Barcelona, Spain at the Swab Art Fair. Continuing to work toward having a visual and conceptual impact on myself as the objective, has shown me that I am the best audience for my work because I certainly know this audience and I’m not lone. Your own eyes sustain your energy that enriches as you progress toward your goals.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
I work from my unconscious. As my paintings develop, they lead me to research subjects that materialized out of my automatic mark making process. With these thoughts in mind, my inner playground introduces you and me, to characters bent on progressive pleasure, illuminated by joy. An expanded sense of possibilities is triggered. These new history paintings point to a better result after the battles and parties. This is how I progress in a world where often absurd conflict works counter to a cultural progression that nudges human evolution forward.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://thomaswhittakerkidd.com/index.html
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thomaswhittakerkidd/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thomas.w.kidd
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOSa22QzORI&list=PLSJYfJPdvJvo89I2PoPZ_ukh9VB7eDesw&index=5
- Other: https://santamonica.bgartdealings.com/show/bg-gallery-thomas-whittaker-kidd-2023