ASHEVILLE, NC.- Bender Gallery is presenting “She”, an extraordinary solo exhibition of acrylic, charcoal, and mixed media paintings on board by figure artist Kim Goldfarb. Goldfarb paints expressive portraits of women and girls that connect to the viewer on an emotional level. She paints intuitively with an effortless easy gestural control allowing her to impart something of her emotion or state of mind in each of her paintings. “She” opened on Friday October 2 and runs through November 2 during regular business hours.
Goldfarb’s subjects echo her own feelings. She grew up in a small rural town in southern Georgia during the height of the Civil Rights Movement. Growing up in the deep South with the yearning to be an artist was not easy for her. She was a shy child with an emotionally distant mother and spent a lot of her time alone cultivating her imagination. Goldfarb’s experiences growing up in such circumstances have profoundly affected her and much of her body of work.
Goldfarb paints extemporaneously with no plans, drawings or live models. When she approaches the blank “canvas”, she has no idea of what she is going to paint. Goldfarb’s favorite tools are steel wool, rags, clay scrapers, charcoal, and her fingers. Brushes are seldom used. She enjoys the physical nature of the work, often placing the board on the floor, pouring, splattering, and scraping the paint. Goldfarb intuitively pulls images from the abstraction in the marks and stains and then begins her drawing and painting. She explains, “In this act of surrender I temporarily suspend my conscious mind and allow the whispering of the muse to guide me”. For the subjects’ faces and poses, Goldfarb works roughly from photographic source material including old black and white snapshots and images from art books and magazines. The expression on the sitter’s face is often what attracts her; In many of the paintings a lone woman stares solemnly, directly at the viewer. The only narrative in the painting is with the viewer. These women want to engage us, to be seen and understood. Goldfarb paints with a limited palette allowing the essence of the subject to shine through the abstraction.
Goldfarb’s paintings are a tribute to feminism and its powerful mystification. The subjects are strong and confident and often portray women of color. Goldfarb explains that her intent is to honor these women and children of color and to portray the strength she sees in them through her own experience. Goldfarb’s work is reminiscent of the late feminist icon, painter Alice Neel, and invokes a similar feel to the works of contemporary artist, Chantal Joffe.
Kim Goldfarb received her BFA degree in drawing and painting at the University of Georgia. She pursued a painting career and gallery directorships in Chicago before moving to New Mexico. In the early 90’s she began working in figurative clay and mixed media sculpture. While watching a movie about Jackson Pollock, Goldfarb was inspired by his passionate unrestrained style to return to her first love, painting. She has exhibited at many major art fairs and solo exhibitions in the U.S. She lives and works near Albuquerque in an area of beauty, solitude and majesty with her artist husband and her dogs.
Bender Gallery is a contemporary fine art and sculpture gallery in Asheville, N.C. representing both established and emerging artists from around the world. The gallery exhibits figurative and abstract paintings and sculptures of glass, bronze and clay.
