Bubbles, bulges, and veils equal body, land, and space; yet the paintings are not depictions. They examine how todays crisis of identity, anxieties over humanity’s effect on our planet, and an urgent sense of surviving have complicated our fluency with desire.

The paintings are conceived from a non gendered sensuous place and invite a renewed relationship with desire. Chance operations and intentional marks inhabit each end of the spectrum. I make fleshy paintings filled with yearning. These worlds are filled with eclipsed light, shape, and gender. They are meant to seduce by offering a place for an un-inhibited gaze.

Rubbing image against abstraction, wicked and full of pleasure the pictures are bulbous, leaking, and engorged. The artworks offer a home for contemplating gender construction, portrayal of the body and ideas about beauty through fractured, partial or layered images. Painted veils are reveal and obscure.

Aerosol and oil are used to make the artworks. Everything is composed of mist and clay: gassy, billowy, and full of dirt. Hand-mixed and ready made chroma provide the palette: hot pink, green earth, black and white. Expansive surfaces invite giant gestures and piled shapes. Using my entire reach and oversized tools, the imagery points to outer-space, renaissance murals, body-parts and our infinite interior.

Out in the open desire is not associated with shame, neurosis, or suffering. Instead, marvelous pyramids guard sunlit gates. Protuberance, holes and mounds fill the landscape. The paintings contain secret worlds where boobs, bulges and passageways leak their want. Nasty, sexy, and curious, yearning fills the space; what is rendered and what is a blur?

As drips and bleed leave a residue, chance enters the work. This mystery is spiritual like the painting systems of Agnes Martin and Agnes Pelton. It is corporeal like the bumps of Francis Bacon, Louise Bourgeois and Christina Quarles.

Concentrating on exploring the notions of yearning, the paintings portray desire and its attending psychological states including anticipation, arousal, regret. I chart these realms through the preservation of darkness, the tingling light and with layers revealing and hiding both image and abstraction. 

Kim Manfredi graduated from Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) with a BFA in 1988 and then worked as a skilled decorative painter for many years. She returned to MICA and graduated under the tutelage of Grace Hartigan and Joyce Kozloff earning an MFA in 2009.

After graduating MICA, Kim was represented by C. Grimaldis Gallery, 2009 – 2013 and has attended residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, VCCA, Maryland Art Place and most recently a portfolio reviewed workshop at Anderson Ranch. Kim is represented by Slate Contemporary in the bay area and exhibits at various venues in the Coachella Valley. Kim is a founder of the Desert Open Studios Tour.