We were lucky to catch up with Kimberly Trowbridge recently and have shared our conversation below.

Kimberly, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

My creative life-project over the past decade has been the building and sharing of a visual language through painting.

One of the most meaningful ways I do this is through field painting. I spend time in different locations painting directly from nature, responding to the specific palette of the place, and connecting with the local community.

In the past few years, I have developed my work in the Mojave Desert, CA and the sagebrush country of eastern Washington. The colors and forms of these places are in drastic contrast to the lush forests of my native Pacific Northwest and have given me the opportunity to recalibrate my visual language.

In addition to field painting, I cultivate long-term relationships with places by setting-up a studio, teaching workshops, hosting discussions, and exhibiting works. I return again and again, delving deeper into the context and excavating the poetic narratives that arise from my research.

I am interested in deconstructing perception— essentializing what I see into a lexicon of colored shapes. I use this lexicon to reconstruct images that express my experience. My paintings are visual texts that punctuate the formal elements, inviting viewers to recognize not only the motif depicted, but the process of its making.

During my time in the Mojave, I worked concurrently on multiple pieces, painting onsite during the day, and at night developing a series of studies based on “The Empire of Flora,” a painting by the 17thc. painter, Nicolas Poussin. I learned to make 2-part silicone molds at the Yucca Valley Materials Lab, run by the amazing Heidi Schwegler, and created a series of plaster and concrete forms inspired by Poussin’s classical frieze of figures.

The high desert, with its perceivable horizon, became the stage upon which my alphabetic forms could be arranged and rearranged, a constant shifting of meanings. I was seeing Poussin through the colors and forms of the desert, and the desert through the compositional strategies of Poussin.

These paintings and sculptures, along with other field explorations from the past several years, came together in my recent exhibition, “Field & Figure,” at J. Rinehart Gallery in Seattle (June 2024).

Kimberly, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Hello! I am Kimberly Trowbridge, and I am a visual artist and educator. I combine painting, sculpture, language, performance, and site-specific research. I create experiences for inquiry and exploration in visual thinking.

I have taught visual concepts in painting and drawing for nearly 20 years and I am the Founder and Director of the Modern Color Atelier, a globally recognized painting program through Gage Academy of Art. My pedagogy transforms the lessons of perceptual modernism into applicable tools for a contemporary painting practice.

In 2018-2020, I was the inaugural Creative Fellow at Bloedel Reserve, a 150-acre garden amid an old growth forest in the Pacific Northwest. My first solo museum exhibition, Into the Garden, at Bainbridge Island Museum of Art (2021), showcased 42 paintings installed as a narrative walk-through, revealing the themes and insights from my time on the field.
A published catalog accompanied the exhibition.

In 2021, I completed a 30-foot, 3-dimensional mural as part of the Facebook Open Arts Commission. The installation highlights the flora and fauna of the PNW presented within a context of color theory, moving the viewer between tone and color.

In 2022, I spent a month in residence at the Jentel Artist Residency in Wyoming. I created a series of paintings that record the shifting of the late summer palette into autumn, with the incredible backdrop of the Big Horn Mountains.

My work has been exhibited in numerous galleries both regionally and nationally, and my work is part of numerous private and public collections, including the Microsoft Collection and the King County Public Art Collection. I recently completed a commission for the new Hotel Westland collection, curated by ARTXIV, in Pioneer Square, in downtown Seattle.

I am currently represented by J. Rinehart Gallery.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

My work as an artist and educator unites in my desire to create contexts that heighten visual awareness and promote meaningful exchanges with perception.

I am passionate about the structure of visual language and the poetic empowerment of understanding the formal building blocks of 2-dimensional images. My work attempts to highlight those formal elements in a rigorous and playful manner that reveals new modes of seeing and thinking. Having a visual language creates agency— the ability to respond to and transform reality.

I am endlessly inspired by the process of forming, building, and speaking through shapes of color, and I love sharing this with my community. I recently hosted a retreat and collage workshop at Boxx Gallery, in Tieton, WA, where I invited people to respond to a large still life installation. A group of my alumni students helped me produce a palette of painted papers for participants to use in the process of identifying shape and color interactions. The process of collage is a wonderful, approachable way of activating perceptual awareness— creating physical, flat shapes of color that can be transformed into a unique and expressive composition.

Have you ever had to pivot?

Like so many others when the pandemic hit, I had to pivot my in-person programming to online in the spring of 2020. This was an enormous shift from working in the studio alongside my students, and often with a life model present. Interestingly, however, many aspects of working virtually have been really positive and I have continued offering the Modern Color Atelier online since. This new format has allowed me to work with students and artist all over the nation and globe. I have found that having to set-up a studio within their own living environment creates a more sustainable creative practice for students. Additionally, everyone in the program has the same, intimate view of the demonstrations my instructors and I give, and the ability to return and to work at their own pace alongside the recordings of the sessions.

While there is nothing to replace the tactile, in-person experience of painting, there are so many visual concepts that can be shared in an online format. Value structure, composing with shapes, figure-ground considerations, and temperature relationships can all be grappled with in a rigorous manner here.
I have also found that working from the figure online has opened doors for invention and expression with students, instead of the pressure to chase the realistic pose when the model is in-person. The online format actually emphasizes the formal language of shape, color, and composition that I am more interested in sharing with my students.

The flexibility of working online has been crucial for my own artistic practice. It means that I can continue my on-site field research in different locations while also directing my program. I now have two incredible teaching artists working with me, Ashley Johnson and Amy Erickson, for whom the online format is also important and necessary for maintaining their own artistic practice and life-balance.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.kimberlytrowbridge.com
• Instagram: @kimberly_trowbridge
• Youtube: @kimberlytrowbridge

Image Credits

Leanna Bre Photography
Arturo Solorio
J. Rinehart Gallery