Kim Curtis comes to painting from a rich background in theatrical costume design. For thirteen years, Ms. Curtis designed and constructed costumes for theaters throughout the San Francisco Bay Area including a six-year stint as Master Craftsperson for the San Francisco Opera Costume Shop.

At the Opera, Curtis constructed the armor, jewelry, headdresses and masks for some of the world’s most renowned singers and designers. She then returned to the California College of Arts and Crafts where she further developed the style she had honed through years of costume sketching.

Ms. Curtis holds a degree from UC Berkeley in History of Art as well as in Painting from CCAC. Both her costume work and her study of Art have brought her to work extensively abroad, mainly in Italy and Germany. She now paints full-time in her studio in Urbana, IL.

Ms. Curtis is represented in Chicago, IL by Kasia Kay Art Projects Gallery and in Tampa, FL by Atelier Bleu Acier 

Artist Statement:

I take my cues from nature. We are constantly surrounded by a visual abstraction which, because our minds are so quick to understand it, we rarely appreciate. I am inspired by the natural world’s movement through time; its colors, its layers, its residues, its variables. I feel compelled not to duplicate it, but to imitate it.

The medium of oil paint is its own element in my work; my paintings are as much abstract formal structures as they are “landscapes”.

Taoists say that to apply a name to something leads to forgetting what it is. Through the re-focusing of my sources and in solving the problems of painting, I re-see these things I’d similarly named and neglected.