Description
Seascapes Collection “Water Dreams Series”
Title: Water Dreams #6, “La Mer’s Bouquet”
16″x20″ Acrylic Mixed Media on Canvas
Framed with “light blonde” Poplar frame.
Artist: Kimberly J. Franklin
Artist’s Statement
In a world where dreams and water merge and flow, where reality and the surreal morph into one, “Water Dreams” is metaphor for life. Continuously shifting and evolving with the tide, the soul too is transformed on its journey to the summit. Often times, the path is not clear, but rocky, murky, dark and unknown. We encounter experiences that can leave us fragile and spinning to find the direction of the light. Yet, if we can find stillness, the element that connects us to the Divine, we find ourselves floating in the tranquility of the present. By simply, “letting go,” it is in this space that we discover peace and are free.
Artist’s Biography
Landlocked by the prairies, foothills, and mountains of the suburban 1970’s Denver, Kimberly Franklin (born Kimberly Tracy) was always mesmerized by the sea since her early childhood. And she was always creating something from costumes to handmade books and drawings, as art and expression was ubiquitous to her world from the beginning.
In college, Kim attended the University of New Mexico and studied Biology and Chemistry, which fascinated her. She became particularly enamored with the intricate, pattern-filled cellular structures under a microscope, all throughout nature, and forms within the human body. Her two favorite hobbies became her marine aquarium, which was teeming with life, colors and floating mysteries, and her sketchbook.
Then there were her surroundings with the dry yet colorful deserts of New Mexico. She became captivated by Georgia O’Keeffe’s flowing and folded flowers, sumptuous undulating landscapes of bending hills and splendid color and light. After finally taking formal art classes, she found the colors, patterns and forms from Biology articulated now in her artwork. But, it wasn’t until her move to Florida’s Gulf Coast for graduate school, where she was transformed by the water and the water transformed her paintings.
Flowing, colorful and ethereal, Kim Franklin’s work conveys a sensation of life, tranquility and of stillness. The ebb and flow of life from desert to ocean has shaped her artistic language and vision. In her own worlds, “these rich experiences and relics have found their way into my dreams and onto my canvases.”
May these paintings transform you as much as they have transformed me.
Kimberly J. Franklin
