Artist Statement

This body of work explores both the resilience and fragility of the natural world as it’s breached by an ever-growing consumer culture. The detritus of our human lives permeates and transforms nature in the most unnatural of ways. Single-use plastics are the most ubiquitous of the manmade refuse, but furniture also enters this cycle of consumption. These cumbersome objects hold a functional role within domestic spaces, yet once no longer useful, they’re hauled curbside, destined for landfill. Sometimes they’re randomly dumped in a field, where nature does its best to transform them into the landscape. Painting unwanted chairs provides opportunity to create a transformation of my own: empty portraits imagining the human lives this furniture once held. In contrast, other paintings imagine castoff toys in states of transformation into colorful, ambiguous, even playful forms.

My process incorporates paper scraps, shards of plastic, vinyl pieces, and discarded signage into the imagery. These throwaway bits are directly repurposed, serving as an extension of the painted surfaces they come to occupy. Some of this media is nothing more than litter picked up from the ground, while other pieces are from my studio, a way to dismantle and repurpose older drawings and paintings. This improvisational way of creating new configurations always draws from nature as subject matter. The ebb and flow, growth and decay of both the natural and the manmade are in a continuous state of transformation, an abnormal dichotomy between the disposable goods we consume and the natural world we need.

Special thanks to the Armory Art Center in West Palm Beach, Florida, where the artwork in this exhibition was created, as Artist in Residence for 2D Media, beginning August 2021. Thanks to Arts Warehouse for offering it a space to be part of the arts community of Delray Beach.

Kim Rae Taylor is a visual artist and educator based in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she serves as Associate Professor of Fine Art for the University of Cincinnati Clermont College. She received her MFA from the College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning (DAAP) at the University of Cincinnati, and her BFA from The University of Texas at Austin. Additional studies include the University of Georgia in Cortona, Italy, and the Metáfora Center for Art Therapy Studies in Barcelona, Spain. She has been an artist in residence at Taipei Artist Village in Taiwan, Red Gate in Beijing, and Cill Rialaig in County Kerry, Ireland. Taylor has also worked as a graphic designer and illustrator, including work in cartoon animation. Her mixed media paintings and drawings explore a variety of themes informed by nature, language, and gender.

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