We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Kim Clark. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Kim below.

Kim, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Do you wish you had started sooner?

I have always known that I wanted to be an artist, but when it came time to pick a career path, I allowed myself to be talked out of pursuing it in favour of something more financially stable. This decision lead to a lot of jobs, and a few decades of a career in the financial services industry. While it provided some monetary security, it gave me no joy.
Fast forward to my late forties, when I was fired for the first time. It left me wondering what to do next. To my surprise, everyone in my life encouraged me to take the leap and ‘do something with my art’.
I often think about what my life would have been like if I had started my creative career earlier, and where I would be if I had, but ultimately, I know that all those experiences and time spent in other industries have informed the way I view the world and how I express myself through my work. Those years spent in the corporate world are a huge asset to my art career, as I have skills and knowledge around the business of art, which is a tremendous asset that many artists struggle with.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I have always known that I was an artist, but when it came time to choose a career path, I chose the ‘safe’ route and got a job with a steady paycheque. After decades in the finance industry, fate intervened and my position was made redundant. At this time, I took the leap and made painting my full time career.

I am an abstract and representational artist, working primarily in acrylic paint on cradled wood panel, and strive to draw viewers attention to the beauty of commonplace things that we take for granted. I love to paint texture through thin layers of paint. To provide a two dimensional representation that invites you to reach out and engage physically with the piece. After viewing my work, I want you to walk out into the world and notice the small things, details that you never noticed before, and come away with an eye for the beauty that surrounds us.
This texture is often overlayed with a single image, something that has caught my eye that may be overlooked by most, making it the star and welcoming the viewer into my way of observing the world.
 

My most recent collection ‘Overlooked’ was inspired by asphalt.

October 2024, I started an 8 month residency with Glenhyrst Art Gallery, in Brantford, ON and started wandering the grounds seeking the inspiration that had been eluding me for months. On one of those walks, I looked down. At what was under my feet. It was a sunny day, and as I looked down, I noticed all the pebbles that made up the pavement that I was walking on. The colours of those pebbles, the textures, the interesting patterns of the cracks, the plants pushing their way through to the surface. There was my inspiration.

As I started to render pavement in paint, I thought about what a large role pavement plays in our lives.

We travel to new places on roadways, and back home again after those adventures.
Those roadways connect us to friends and family. They make me nostalgic for childhood days running down the road and up driveways to the doors where our friends lived, knocking to ask if they could come out and play. Skipping, riding bikes, playing hopscotch. Finding a penny and feeling lucky all day because of it. Together. In community.

And in community, we took care of those roadways, made sure they were safe to travel on. Invested in the infrastructure that brought us together.

As time has passed, and technology has given us more ways to communicate, and with it the reasons to leave our homes dwindled. As has our participation in our communities. With that, the care we put into those communal places, spaces and infrastructure also declines in favour of what serves us as individuals.

How do we get back to thinking more about the future, the greater good of many, rather than the immediate needs of us as individuals? Maybe we start by getting outside in our community, and looking around us, including under our feet. If we all did that, can you imagine the conversations it would spark?

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

I think we need to shift our thinking about the arts. In this productivity driven society, it is viewed as an extra, something for a small group of people that are creative or are affluent enough to indulge in it.
I believe it is an essential part of the human experience, one of the oldest ways we have to communicate our perspectives, expand our minds to new viewpoints, and bind us together as a community. The sooner we start viewing creativity and creatives as essential, the better off we will be.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

The world feels overwhelming to me. I paint to process that overwhelm and all the things that have created it. Through paint, I can distill down the sensory overload and put focus on something that has snagged my attention as if a spotlight had been placed on it. Through that process, a painting is created.
Once I have released it, welcoming others into my world, seeing them interact with the piece, and have an emotional reaction to something I have created, is the ultimate reward for me.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.kimclarkfineart.com
• Instagram: @kimclark.fineart
• Facebook: @kimclark.fineart

Image Credits

Artist photo- Sherry Smith Photography
Artwork photos – Paul Smith of Photohouse Studio