Gallery One Ellleven
Kimberly Wallace




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early portrait work:
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Artist Statement:
"I started creating out of a need to control. It was relaxing and something to look at and be proud of and reflect on when completed. I was in 3rd grade the first time I remember being completely in awe of paint as it came out of the tube. But even before that, the paint with water books kept me busy in preschool. I very vividly remember reading my father the three little pigs as I watched the page turn from white to pink with just a touch of water. By the third grade, I had seen my mother at the kitchen table cooking dinner and stopping every so often to add a touch of paint in just the right place. She has since stopped painting, and I can remember looking at her paintings on the wall and thinking how sad it must be to give up something that was so wondrous in order to more diligently tend to responsibilities. I told myself I wouldn't choose. I can do it all if I just try hard enough and never sleep. (Actually having children has taught me otherwise!) My elementary art teacher followed me once I entered junior high school. The substitute art teacher that we had occasionally in junior high soon would become my high school art teacher. I landed in independent art group 2 hours every other day. The teacher was not in the room, but we had full access to all of the supplies and equipment. This would be the end of my education in art, but the beginning of an independent view of what I wanted to create.

Just after High school, I marched one of my paintings all over downtown Omaha to several galleries. I wanted to join, but most of all, I wanted an opinion. I wanted to gauge reactions. That would turn out to be the worst thing I could have done. Gallery directors I spoke to were very cruel to make a long story short, and I took it to heart. As life would have it, I met someone. We moved in together and life took over. I did just a couple of watercolors over the next few years. I had two beautiful little boys and worked all the time. It would turn out to be a bigger blessing than I had imagined. They became my inspiration. After doing a graphite and charcoal piece of my youngest, people took notice and started to push me into doing more. I couldn't resist it any more. So here I am two years later with no wall space left.

Art gives me the perfect excuse to fall within myself. It is my meditation time. I am in control of it and I can choose to accept or reject any outside input. I don't want to just experience a sunrise, I want to understand it. Break it down and study how the light bounces and refracts. It's my time to not obsess over outward appearances, whether they be what is visible or what is perceived. For that reason, I am overwhelmingly drawn to leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci. He did more than just create art, he had an amazing understanding through study of how and why. I can remember in junior high school, drawing some leaves blowing across the ground. We did a lot of landscaping when I was young and washing leaves off the sidewalk was a weekly chore after mowing. The leaves moved in water much the same way they would in the air. Swaying and bouncing according to obstacles in their path. So I knew in my mind that the the two were relative. What seems to me now to be just a couple of weeks later, I read that Da Vinci studied on this as well and determined the relevance between air and water movements. I felt connected.

Joining the gallery re-affirms to myself that I can do whatever it is that "I" want to do. My destiny is what I make it. I don't have to hear any of the negativity either about my work or just in general. It's like finding the path I lost track of so long ago. I am placing no requirements or objectives on myself. I want to be through being my own worst critic. I will create what I want, when I want and let the chips fall where they may."


Kimberly Wallace
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gallery one ellleven