Kimberly Trowbridge: a brief questionnaire
Q: The coincidence of these works being mounted at the same time that a Picasso exhibit is in town will, I think, draw at least superficial comparison or suggest the idea of an historical relationship to many spectators. As a frequent painter of figures, how do you view yourself in relation to the history of painting? Do you identify as a painter working within an atemporal academic tradition, continuing the formal pursuit of the medium, or do you view your work as deliberately appropriating historical styles?
KT: I see my paintings as part of an ongoing pursuit to express the human experience.
I use the tools that have been forged before me in order to help me carve-out my own vision. For instance, I am deeply influenced by the multiple figure compositions of the Italian Renaissance, where the figures interact on a single, stage-like space. It is through Modernism, however, that I have learned to construct spaces that admit the passage of time by exposing multiple layers and points-of-view. The history of painting is part of my own narrative in painting: the continuous search to find a meaningful, contemporary human form. I do not see my work as ‘atemporal’ at all, but rather that it openly admits my particular vantage point in relation to history. I am searching for a new form that can uphold the burden and the splendor of its naked, conscious self.
Q: I have to ask, considering the mania that blockbuster shows often elicit in artists! Picasso: love him or hate him?
KT: Of course I love his work. He rigorously and intimately grappled with the human narrative through the expression of form. Andrew Forge once wrote about how artists have an audience that is deeply internal and through this they are “discoursing with every artist who has ever lived whom they revere and whom they take as important.” Picasso is part of my internal audience. I relate to his incessant hunger and need to touch, break-open, turn around, construct, and renew the human form. I relate to his dissatisfaction with the depiction of external reality. I think Picasso’s work is gritty and hands-on and very approachable. While I do not gain any meaningful information about color from Picasso, his work has led me to understand Cezanne’s project of synthesizing Impressionism into touchable form. Because of this, I have been able to see a very personal opening in my own work: the possibility for light and color to coexist with highly structured forms.
Q: In your statement about Night Moves, you say you are continuing an exploration of the meanings found in the relationship of figure to environment/space. This statement suggests a slightly more formal inquiry into the possibilities of the painted figure as a signifier than some of your previous work, which often emphasized an intimate, biographical mythologizing that verged on or completely crossed into the realm of self portraiture. Do you find yourself moving towards a more social or political element in your recent work?
KT: I find that the more I focus on the formal aspects of my work, the more meaningful and personal the content ultimately becomes. Instead of depicting myself as an image in my current work, my decisions about scale, placement, color relationships, and space inherently include my mind and body and begin to reveal forms to me that a known image of myself might not be able to transport. The figures in my work are allegorical constructs, not particular people. They are vessels that speak about the age-old painting challenge of relating the figure to the ground. And what could be more personal than how we as humans relate to our environment and to each other in this very physical, and at the same time completely ephemeral, world? We are simultaneously locating and losing ourselves.
Q: Which of course also begs the question: is the coupling in Night Moves a self portrait?
KT: Yes and no. The coupling is a personal and universal metaphor for how we mutually define each other on an intimate level as well as on a larger, collective level. The act of coupling is the hunger and search to touch and move and redefine through interchanging parts of ourselves with others.
