mint chocolate chip. 2020, acrylic on panel, 48 x 36 inches
getting to know our artists and their work is one of the most pleasurable aspects of our job. being able to be a bystander and watch styles develop and change over the years is an intimate position. we want our collectors to be able to get a glimpse into our artist’s lives especially during this time at home. to start off the series of questions & answers with our artists we are beginning in the new york studio of kim testone. her exhibition sweeter days was scheduled to open in may featuring trompe l’oeil paintings of nostalgic items from her childhood. something we have all been longing for recently happy personal associations to provide comfort. tomorrow we will go live on instagram with kim at 1 pm for a tour of her studio before she ships the paintings to us. hope you can join!
kim testone in her studio
give us a bit of your life backstory?
i grew up in a small town an hour outside of pittsburgh, pa. throughout my childhood, i was always drawn to creative, generally solitary hobbies – drawing, watching cartoons and movies, reading, playing piano. i didn’t know exactly what i wanted to do when i got older, but i knew i wanted to do something that required creativity and imagination. i considered animation, special effects for movies, being a fiction writer, doing something in music, and of course, being an artist. i got a partial scholarship to a private college and started out planning a dual major in music and art. during my sophomore year, i saw a flyer on campus for the disney college program in florida, and it changed the trajectory of my life. i had always dreamed of working for disney, in whatever capacity i could. i interviewed, got accepted, and my parents drove me to florida for the semester. i worked at several attractions in the theme parks, and almost immediately my world opened up – thousands of unique people from every walk of life working together, speaking different languages, honoring different cultures and lifestyles. it was such a different perspective and really opened my mind. Iimet my husband during the program, and decided to move to florida and finish my undergraduate degree in studio art. at that point, though, i didn’t really have a vision or solid technique for my art, and it took a backseat to my need to pay back student loans. after college, i held a variety of jobs – theme park caricature and silhouette artist, real estate agent for a large development, then editor of a small newspaper in the very unique town of celebration, florida. but the dream of working in the arts kept calling to me. finally, i did some research and saw that a small art business magazine was published out of orlando. i wrote to the editor, gave her my background, and told her i wanted to come to work there if an opportunity ever arose. i heard back the next day that they were looking for an assistant editor; i interviewed, got the job and was promoted to editor after my predecessor left eight months later. while there, i had the opportunity to interview dozens of the country’s best artists, work with many insightful arts writers and look at tens of thousands of images of art. i soaked it all up like a sponge. after several years, inspired by the artists i interviewed, i began to practice making my own art again. i made lists of the art and artists i liked and why. i assembled a library of books on various techniques and watched hundreds of youtube videos of other artists painting. i woke up early and stayed up late to paint. after about six months of this rigorous schedule (during which i was also finishing my master’s degree in arts administration), i decided to leave my job to take some time for my painting. two months later, i won second place in the first painting competition i entered, and i haven’t stopped painting since, so for about seven years now.
cherry reflections 2020, acrylic on panel, 36 x 48 inches
(l) reese's 2020, acrylic on panel, 12 x 12 inches (r) skittles 2020, acrylic on panel, 12 x 12 inches
what does the process of making art mean to you?
i really love the whole painting process – from planning what to paint, to developing my approach, to the intense quiet of building the painting layer by layer. in a way, i feel like i took the dream of being an animator, with all of the planning, storyboarding and patience, and applied it to being a painter, which has been great, since it turns out that i really enjoy working alone. i’ve never felt more like myself than when it’s just me and my art. i tend to be a bit of a workaholic, which in some careers can take a toll on a person, but i think it works out pretty perfectly for making art because my mind is always working on things, in one way or another. i become obsessive, immersed completely in the development of the paintings and the painting process. i feel like everything i paint puts a little bit of me out into the world, and hopefully ultimately brightens someone’s day when they see it. That helps to give me a sense of purpose — if i don’t think of the art as just an exercise but instead a way to help people connect with lost happy memories.
pb&j 2020, acrylic on panel,18 x 24 inches
what are your go to materials?
princeton synthetic sable brushes, golden heavy body acrylic paints, golden satin glazing liquid, ampersand gessobord, and my palette and palette paper.
what is a typical studio day like for you?
i always work better with structure, so i keep a pretty regular schedule, although some days are longer than others. my husband works from home as well, so it’s nice that we can share our meals and work in between. i’ll generally start around 9 a.m., setting up my paints and whatever piece i’m working on, and then get some video playing on my computer in the background — something with a lot of conversation, since i’m listening to it almost like a radio show instead of really watching it. typically that means i either have a good mystery or sci-fi tv show, or i often watch replays of live streams from disney world (we no longer live in florida, but it holds a lot of happy memories for me). these types of programs are very calming for my brain and help to keep me focused on my art. i can’t really paint in silence or listen to music; my mind wanders too much. i’ll paint until about 6, with a lunch break somewhere in there, and then at least three or four nights a week, i’ll paint after dinner until about 10 or 11 p.m. Sometimes i work on multiple pieces in one day, especially if i’m nearing the end of a painting and feel like it’s better to work on a different piece for the evening and come back to the other with fresh eyes on a different day.
strawberry cone 2020, acrylic on panel, 48 x 36 inches
what lead you down the path of creativity? we are always intrigued by childhood memories?
as a kid, i was always drawing. my grandpap would go to our small town newspaper and get me a big roll of recycled newspaper to use as my drawing paper. i especially loved drawing while watching cartoons and movies. when i was 10, i saw a television advertisement for a drawing contest to win 12 front row tickets to the disney on ice show coming to pittsburgh. i wanted to go so badly. you just needed to draw your favorite disney character. i took out my recycled newsprint and my crayons and drew a large mickey mouse, probably about 18 inches tall, and sent it in. a few weeks later, i got a letter saying i’d won the grand prize! i was so excited. i got to take my sister, parents and my friends from school, and it was such a beautiful show with all of the wonderful costumes and performers. on the way out of the building, we amazingly saw my drawing hanging on a post in the corridor. we asked permission and took it home and framed it, and my parents still have it today. i wasn’t sure exactly what kind of creative career i wanted, but i think that whole experience solidified that i wanted to be an artist or creative person in one way or another.
hostess 2020, acrylic on panel, 12 x 16 inches
one of the aspects of an artist that we find so fascinating is their visual voice and how over time it is shaped and formed. tell us how you found your style?
i think of my style as partly about what i paint and partly about how i paint it. i was really lucky to have worked at the art magazine because i got to look at so much art every day and talk to lots of contemporary painters about their process and how they developed their own styles. one of the best things i learned was that “style” could not be forced or chosen; it was something that was a natural result of an artist developing his or her own technique and vision. at the time i thought, well crap, that will never happen for me. but, like all things, it just takes a lot of time, practice and life experience. really, i have no regrets about not pursuing a career in painting sooner in my life, because ultimately my life experiences shaped who i am and what i want to accomplish with my paintings now. i started out using photo references of public areas, often with people, until i realized what a pain it really was to drive around and take photographs. i eventually decided that, because i was more of a homebody anyway, i should look around my house and paint the things that made me happy, things i could easily stage. i didn’t want to paint brooding, moody still life, but rather things with a little nostalgia, humor or personality to them; maybe that was that abandoned animator in me. i chose crayons, vintage toys, candy bars, comic books, recipe cards, and a lot of desserts. i realized i had way more control and creativity over these types of paintings than i ever could getting references outside of my house. as for my painting technique, it’s not something directly adapted from any one source, but a combination of methods that i have found work best for what i am trying to accomplish. this took years of practice and experimentation, and i’m always still learning. i started out working in oils, but there were a number of aspects that didn’t work long-term for me, mainly the drying time. because i liked painting in layers, some of my early paintings would take months to complete, or be covered in dust or cat hair when drying, which just drove me insane. i considered acrylics, but i didn’t want to end up with a very flat, blocky-looking acrylic piece. still, acrylics were ultimately the best solution for me. i studied the work of every acrylic realist painter i could find, and researched the ways in which acrylic paint could be pushed or manipulated. today, i paint in dozens and dozens of thin, often translucent acrylic layers, which coalesce with each other as the painting progresses. i also don’t blend my paint; any soft transitions are an illusion created by the layers of paint overlapping. this is a super-time-consuming process by a lot of art-making standards, but it’s the only way i can manipulate the paint to get the look i want and have the level of control i need.
sundae cone 2020, acrylic on panel, 16 x 12 inches
on the left is the still life set up and on the right is the painting in progress
soft serve 2020, acrylic on panel, 24 x 12 inches
sundae painting in progress
share with us one of your favorite paintings and why?
i really love doing what i call my “pile paintings” – the ones that include a pile of similar objects and fill the entire picture plane from edge to edge. painting these pieces is like giving my brain a lovely puzzle to figure out. it’s honestly very calming for me. one of the most complicated and largest pile paintings i’ve done is the 24” x 24” “summer strawberries” one, in part because there are just so many elements and so much subtlety required to get it to look right. i think this one is also kind of special for me because i started it last year, let it go for a quite a while, and picked it back up just after the coronavirus hit, so it’s taken on a different meaning for me. i really wanted to make it an especially colorful and happy-looking painting, given the circumstances, and it was a great escape for my brain to have something so complicated to focus on.
summer strawberries 2020, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 24 inches
all available work by kim testone can be viewed on our website under the artist page under her individual tab. click on the kim’s name to bring up all work with sizing and pricing. please call the gallery if you have any further questions.