Mayor's Gallery - December 2019: Kim Squaglia forges organic forms in resin
Kim Squaglia; Cloud 9; oil, acrylic and resin
In an effort to promote and showcase the work of artists in Sacramento, Mayor Darrell Steinberg’s office displays artwork that rotates monthly. Below is a description of the December 2019 exhibit.
Kim Squaglia returned home to Sacramento 12 years ago with a BA and MA in fine arts. She now works as both a real estate agent, specializing in east Sacramento homes, and as a professional artist. The work she produces out of her home studio is on permanent display at the Crocker Art Museum, Microsoft and Neiman Marcus; it has shown nationally in New York, Los Angeles and Miami and internationally at Art Cologne and Focus Abengoa in Spain.
Kim describes her process in her artist’s statement: “I approach making a painting, as though I am making a sculpture out of flat shapes. It just so happens that those shapes are made from paint. They are built from the ground up with a layer of clear resin between each color. This process creates depth, shadow and at times the illusion of movement. I developed this process 18 years ago, and I have been doing it ever since. I am influenced by imagery in nature; deep sea geography, space photography, the microscopic, woodgrain, etc... So many forms in nature overlap, and it’s that familiar connective tissue I am trying to tap into with my work.”
The biomorphic patterns Squaglia creates through resin layering are particularly evident in Cloud 9, which was on display in January in the mayor’s gallery at City Hall. Across the top of the painting, red stalagmites with blue cores emerge magma-like from the cool sage green of the canvas – filaments bridge between the forms.
Kim has expressed a belief that “art should bring one pleasure, and not always in the traditional sense of the word.” Cloud 9 evokes not only pleasure through joy – with the brilliant heat of its reds and golds offset by cool blues and greens – but also through challenge, there is something uncanny in the paintings’ suspension of weighty forms.
To see more of Kim Squaglia’s work, visit the Crocker Art Museum; to see what’s on display next month in the mayor’s gallery, check back in here.
