I am always searching for my authentic expression. I read a lot about art, the history of art and women and the history of ideas. I often struggle with what to paint - that's when I will gesso a canvas and let my mind wander and clear and cloud over again. Some days it's just a gesso day.

Sometimes it's hard to find the best direction - sometimes it seems too easy. Sometimes I need to work very hard to learn something I have discovered through some frustration that I don't know. I guess I am searching for a fluency - someplace where subject and technique flow in a direct, authentic way.

Lately I have been looking at blue. Learning blue. Trying to find my drawing hand when I am painting. These pictures of skies and bones and people are all blues.

The best time in painting is when the painting ceases to be a painting and takes on a life of it's own. When the face goes from a mess of paint strokes to eyes staring back at you. When an abstraction of blue and white paint becomes an enormous sky and I wait to see a tiny biplane rise up out of a billow of clouds.

--Kim Itkonen

All works are untitled

Kim's web site is located at:
www.seenhere.com