Studio Visit with Kim Roberts

Originally recorded June 17, 2022.

George Irwin of Western Gallery visits with Kim Roberts, whose work centers on abstract landscape painting and who is based in Crestone / Denver, Colorado, for a wide-ranging conversation about the artist’s work, process, and studio practice.

Transcript note: Speaker labels were assigned from the source audio where available and dialogue context otherwise. Paragraph breaks were added for readability, and verbal filler was lightly edited. Joint labels mark rapid or overlapping exchanges. This was prepared from an automated transcription, so minor transcription errors may remain.

Instagram Live studio visit—June 17, 2022

Watch the original video on Instagram (35:41)

Participants: George Irwin and Kim Roberts

George Irwin: Happy Friday, Instagram! George Irwin here with Western Gallery and it's time for yet another studio visit with a New Western Talent artist. Today we're going to be talking to Kim Roberts in either Crestone or Denver, Colorado. She's splits her time between both and she does these very sort of... I don't know and they feel very intuitive, kind of like abstract landscapes. And I am very curious to talk to her. She has approached this career in art following a long career in leading meditation. So I think that there's a lot of overlap in people who have spiritual practices or maybe if you don't think of meditation as spiritual as, I don't know, some kind of intentional psychological physiological practice and making art. And I guess she very much recognized that as she started to paint and because that became her primary practice. So let's see if I can find her on here and get her on the,

George Irwin: on this live and thank you guys for all for tuning in. For those of you who are just joining me, Kim Roberts is going to be our guest for the studio visit. So I've sent her an invitation with see if she gets it and if it works out. You never know. I hope that you guys have fun plans this weekend. I guess it's Father's Day weekend, oh I meant to mention that in my in the email I sent out. Hey Kim, I just sent you an invitation. I don't know if you can still get that and pop on but I will... I can try again in just a second. Anyway, I went to go visit my son at his school this morning. It was really very cute. He's my younger son. He's four and he's at a Montessori, he's about to be four. He was kind of quiet, it's interesting. All right let's see if I can get... There she is Kim, invitation. Oh, I sent you an invitation Kim, yeah how? Look there should be something that pops up.

George Irwin: Oh no, it says you're unable to join. Maybe a connection issue, we'll see. Kim you may be able to hit like the little video camera icon with a plus at the bottom and request to be in it And if you want to do that then I can accept that request I'll give you another invitation and maybe it will work out

George Irwin / Kim Roberts: Meanwhile

George Irwin: Sometimes there's a little challenge at the beginning of these things. Oh, yep! Yay!

Kim Roberts: Okay, got it.

George Irwin: There she is. Oh, I've got some artwork in the background. Excellent. Hey Kim, how are you? Good, how're you?

Kim Roberts: I'm doing alright.

George Irwin: Where are you today? Are you in Crestone or Denver?

Kim Roberts: Um, I'm in Denver, yeah.

George Irwin: Excellent. So this is your primary studio, I guess?

Kim Roberts: Yeah these days it is. And we're actually preparing for an open studio tour tonight so I'm in a collective with a couple dozen, like maybe even up to 70 other artists and so yeah, we do this twice a year So it's very exciting. There's a lot of buzz in the atmosphere right now. And...

George Irwin: Very cool! 70! So like, the studio you're in, is it like a joint kind of studio workspace for the collective? Or is this just like a studio space and the collective is kind of like spread throughout?

Kim Roberts: Well I mean I'm using the word collective kind of, you know loosely. It's just a, can I go like that? No. I'm trying to figure this is the first time I've done one of these lives.

George Irwin: I'm like what do we do? No you're doing great.

Kim Roberts: You gotta keep it vertical though. Yeah so it's just, it's a group of artists. It's like a warehouse that's been transformed into a bunch of studio spaces. Actually it's four different spaces all in one complex and sort of an industrial complex. And yeah, and so we're a group of really vibrant artists. Like some very seasoned artists are here and some like me are a little bit newer but yeah it's really nice place to, I don't know, it's just a nice place to get inspiration and be around other artists and have a place to be creative together.

George Irwin: No definitely, I mean community is very important Even though the artistic practice itself is often very isolated, and I mean not in a bad way but like you're left to your own devices to make what you want to make. It's good to be able to have people that you can communicate with.

Kim Roberts: Sounds ideas, actually. Exactly. Yeah.

George Irwin: Cool. Well Kim do you wanna show us around your space there? I'm really curious, it looks like you've got a lot of great work up that you're ready to show. So do you want to add?

Kim Roberts: It's interesting timing too. So I'll turn my camera around so I can just give you the tour here. It's really interesting timing because I'm also preparing in addition to this open studio for which I've just cleaned up my studio. It's taking me a week. That's a big space. I'm also, yeah but I'm, also I have a show opening next week at my gallery in Denver at Dark Gallery so a lot of this work is going to go into that exhibit and so I've I've just created a whole new series, including this one and this and some of these. And all of these that are gonna be included in my upcoming show are all inspired by the landscape down south in Crestone where I live part-time. time. So, and these are this is how I start how I sort of gather my source material. These are acrylic ink drawings and I love working in that medium because it's like it's fluid

Kim Roberts: like watercolor but then you can also let it dry partway and do sort of interesting things like it doesn't you can do washes over it once it dries so it's kind of an interesting

George Irwin / Kim Roberts: medium to work with. So you can kind of put a black and white

George Irwin: kind of composition down and then add washes and it doesn t change the

Kim Roberts: black and whites stuff that you've done? Yeah, yeah I so I only work in indigo they're all blue I love Indigo. And, um, I don't know for some reason I chose that I went traveling. I'm- I loved to go traveling to mountains and right before the pandemic started I took a trip to Norway and a friend of mine who is a more seasoned artist suggested that I, you know when I'm traveling bring a, um you know, sort of a simple kit to paint with. And so I brought one oil stick, one colored pencil and one tube of paint that were all indigo and she's like do monochrome. And so started painting mountains with indigo and I just loved it. Like because, you know when you have limitations it forces you into new creative directions. And so, I just started learning to draw that way with just not necessarily sketching I don't really like charcoal, but sketching with just one color and sort of different

Kim Roberts: mediums and that's sort of become my little style or whatever. And then from those, I bring them back into the studio and then I try to render them into oil paintings. I'm still quite new to oil so it's quite a new medium for me. I was working in encaustic wax for a long time. And then, I'll show you here. These are... So this is not Western art, but these are some of the monotypes that I was doing before I started working in this landscape style. And so this was kind of a fun exploration to work in encraustic. And I've got tons of these kinds of things that I've done over the years.

George Irwin / Kim Roberts: It's also nice, I can tell you're ready to show it.

Kim Roberts: Yeah well, I've been working. And here are some of my little small, these are just five by five cradled panels. Little, you know, things that people can put in their suitcase and take home their friends if they want. Yeah, so that's what I got going on here.

George Irwin: Awesome! I think I saw some of the pieces that you've got in New Western Tower behind you somewhere. Would you mind showing us some of those?

George Irwin / Kim Roberts: Oh yeah sure. Purple Mountain Majesty, End of the Road and Windswift I think are

Kim Roberts: go to three that are there we go this purple one. So this is one, this is the wing swept and I love this little thing here these are by yaks so

George Irwin: where I live in Crestone yes somebody imported yaks there's a lot of spiritual

Kim Roberts: communities in Creston and so there were quite a few Tibetans that lived there and they wanted yaks. And so we've got, um, and that was years ago. So now there are lots of yaks, but you can see them off in the distance like that. And, um the other one is in the hallway here. Oh nice okay. Right out here in my freedom. Cradled right? Yeah. Uh yeah this is a, no this This is canvas. So yeah, and then here's another one of mine here, desert storm.

George Irwin: Got your nice red dot right there. It looks like that might be going somewhere else.

Kim Roberts: Well cool.

George Irwin: So it's interesting to me that you're talking about being new to oil and coming at it from drawing and exploring with different medium. What were you working in primarily before? Were you working like acrylic or were you just the inks, like you were mentioning, or drawing or what?

Kim Roberts: So it's been a long journey. I actually started painting 20 years ago in acrylic on paper. I was living in Paris at the time and that was what was available in my very small studio. So I would like lay the paper out on the floor and have my acrylic paints. And then, I kind of dropped it for a while. I was busy doing a different career.

George Irwin: And when I got back to Colorado,

Kim Roberts: I lived overseas for many, many years.

George Irwin: And when finally moved back to colorado,

Kim Roberts: I knew somehow that I needed to work within caustic wax. I had known that for a while. And fate threw me together with someone who taught in Kostik. In my tiny little village of like 75 people, there was this in Kostic teacher. So I started doing that. And here, I have to show you these other. So this is some of the other in Kastic work that I did at the very beginning. They're like they're poor and Kostic on paper or on panel. And so you get this nice luminous layering effect. And I loved working with that medium,

George Irwin: but when I moved to Denver,

Kim Roberts: I realized when I was living in this tiny little village, it was great for making art but not so great for getting your art out there in the world and I was getting a bit too isolated. So I moved into Denver right before the pandemic And long story short, I couldn't find a place to work within Caustic because it's a bit toxic. And I discovered the oil paint and just fell in love with it

George Irwin: which was interesting because I had always

Kim Roberts: been intimidated by oil.

George Irwin: And when I finally discovered it,

Kim Roberts: it was like oh yeah this is really fun. So yeah, I just started doing that and I started merging the medium with my landscape landscape, which is you know where I get my, you know, it's my happy place. It's how I ground. It' how I find the inspiration and move to Crestone because of my spiritual community. And a lot of it has to do with just being in the mountains. And so yeah, so I really feel like I'm on a roll now with them, you kno rendering my mountains in ever evolving styles. So we'll see what comes next.

George Irwin: Very cool, I did notice like you know you're showing us some of the ones that you've got for your gallery show that you're going to be taking to the gallery um i don't remember if you said next week something like that. And yeah it looks like you have like uh continue to evolve and i'm really excited to see like how things how things progress for you over over the next, you know, even just a year or so. It's exciting. So before jumping into, well I guess, you said you've been painting for 20 years, but before painting more seriously, I guess maybe, or maybe simultaneously, I'm not sure, you were leading meditations with corporate clients and whatnot?

Kim Roberts: Not corporate per se. I just got obsessed with Ashtanga yoga in my mid-20s and ended up going to India to study with the guru, and while I was there, I connected with a bunch of people in the hospitality industry in the expat community. And so I started hanging out. A lot of my friends were working with really high end hotels in South Asia and so they were like, you know at the time yoga was new I mean that was 30 years ago. And you know some people didn't really know what yoga was and they were like can you come teach our high-end guests and we'll put you up at the hotel and you can get paying private clients but otherwise just come and stay with us and teach a class. And it was great, you know, I was at the stage in my life where I could do that kind of thing. And some of it was more serious. I actually managed the yoga studio at the Mandarin Oriental in Hong Kong, central Hong Kong.

Kim Roberts: It was very intense. So, you now, I had a full on career teaching yoga and then eventually merging that into my psychology background. I'm trained as a psychotherapist. And so then I would lead these retreats. They were like wellness retreats that included yoga and meditation and psychological work, basically.

George Irwin: So one of my thoughts in looking at your work is that there is a lot of energy and motion in the artwork itself. I'm curious, have you noticed and have you thought about, I guess kind of like how the yoga practice has transferred a little bit into movement in your studio or is that not related?

Kim Roberts: Well, I'm tempted just to do this. That one's got a little. Yeah, it does. But you know, honestly, what I find more than... Yeah, it's interesting that you notice the movement because what I tend to notice is when I'm doing it, it's stillness and it's one of the only things after decades of meditation practice trying to calm and still my mind. At one point, I realized that the only thing that completely stops my mind is painting. And so that is what I you know, that's why what I experienced when I do it. But

George Irwin: who knows maybe it's that fluidity, you know seeping in

Kim Roberts: somehow that is yeah, I don't know. I don t know how to answer that.

George Irwin: Yeah, no worries. I always try to connect dots where maybe I shouldn't but that's okay. I mean that's interesting though because you know, you talk about... you hear people talking all the time about getting into flow state and especially with painting. Like even I've experienced that myself and it is really just like it's wild because you can get into it and then like six hours later you're like wait a minute what just happened?

Kim Roberts: Yeah for sure. That's very cool. Yeah, but I think you're on to something with the flow or the fluidity. Because I mean, I think with the yoga particularly that was the thing that really hooked me is that you can find stillness within the movement and that stillness is still a movement because every moment is another moment. It's never a static situation. So yeah, it's a really interesting point and maybe something that I'm going to explore a little bit more explicitly. You know, that each moment even though it is just one moment we can be still in it, it's of fluidity of evolution.

George Irwin: Yeah definitely. I mean, that's interesting now I'm thinking about like, yeah you're talking about like you know, every like moment to moment and then but there's also like when you're looking and being inspired by your the landscape that you're in. And they bring that back to the studio and you're applying it to the work you're making. In a way that's sort of like taking a moment from one place and having that same moment in a different way in another place. And that is sort of weirdly transcendental to me, to think about it like that.

Kim Roberts: But that's cool. Yeah and see now you're talking my language because I don't know if you can see this one behind me. This is what... This is my backyard in Crestone. And basically what I want to express and what I wanna share with people, and here too, is the spaciousness. It's a huge, huge valley. And the... I don't know what I call it, you know, the gift that I have or not the gift, the good fortune that I have to be able to spend time in those places is it's really important to me to share that. And that's what I want to convey and a lot of my work is just giving people an opportunity to dwell in that spaciousness because when your mind can rest in that spaciousness, it's like it's hugely settling and I mean you don't need therapy.

George Irwin / Kim Roberts: That's right yeah I mean yeah exactly that's I mean that's one of the things

George Irwin: that really attracts me to the Western landscape and the whole kind of concept of the American West is you know the openness and but you know I say that but like you can say that and people don't know what you're talking about unless you can experience it or, like you know, like your saying, like experience it through somebody else and what they're creating. To feel that space and to feel that kind of like huge potential energy

Kim Roberts: or something that's out there. It's really exciting. Wow! Yeah and it's a challenge Like I said, it's still a new thing for me and if I can convey even just a little glimpse of that spaciousness then i'll be happy.

George Irwin: Yeah very cool. So you are you have your collective group tonight or the collective show tonight and then remind me of the name of the gallery that you're showing in beginning, is it next year? When does it open? Yeah, it opens on June 30th

Kim Roberts: and that is called Dart Gallery. It's in the Santa Fe Arts District on Santa Fe Drive in Denver and yeah I've actually got another show that's already opened for the whole summer. It's at one of the real estate agencies in Littleton. And that will stay up all summer as well. And then I have another one in October at Dart Gallery. So it's a busy season, yeah.

George Irwin: Yeah, really? So how did you transition to this new profession? Did you start painting and then shopping your work around different galleries or did you just know some people and they saw your work and they're like, hey I would love to show this. A lot of people that watch these interviews are aspiring artists who don't really know how to get into Zanes. Yeah so what comes to mind is that the same thing

Kim Roberts: that happened to me when I was getting obsessed with Ashtanga Yoga basically happened with the art

George Irwin: And what I discovered is this, when you start making time for the thing

Kim Roberts: that you're passionate about, the universe responds. And so I just started noticing that I came to a turning point in my life. I had been living in Southeast Asia for 15 years and it all just fell apart and I found myself plopped back in Colorado

George Irwin: and like great, what do I do now?

Kim Roberts: And so, I started painting And, you know, because of events in the past few years, I've gotten a lot of stuff together online and I'm doing a lot of online teaching in my other capacity as teacher and educator. But I just noticed that the more I spend focusing, more energy I spend focussing on the art, the more it comes back. And people honestly they just call me out of the blue. Like they see my website, They're like, can we buy this piece for our client?

George Irwin: Would you have a show here?

Kim Roberts: The gallery that I have a show at next month is a collective. And so I became a founding member just through auspicious coincidence. I knew the people that were founding it right at the time that I was moving to Denver. So honestly, I don't think there's a formula other than, I hate to sound cliche,

George Irwin: but follow your passion, you know?

Kim Roberts: Do the thing you love to do wholeheartedly and just trust that. Trust that process.

George Irwin: Yeah, I think that's from what I've experienced and from what i've learned talking to other artists that's kind of what it comes down to and it's like, I like to say like you're sort of intercompassed or something like just pay attention to what you feel like you need to be doing and do your best.

Kim Roberts: Yeah, and that's not to say I have spent a lot of money on programs figuring out how to get a website together and market art online and uploading stuff to Saatchi. And you know, I've done all the things. But I think that even though those are important, honestly the more like the most sort of bang for my buck if I can put it that way, is just making the art.

George Irwin: Well definitely, that's the most important thing to making artists, is making art. And if it's... and the quality of it and kind of like the realness of it and just being true with yourself about what you're doing. I think people can see it when you're being yourself in the work you're making and that resonates. We're talking about the effect of the landscape on people, but it's the landscape as translated through the artist. And if the artist is true to themselves in what they're doing, then that comes through much clearer and has a better ability to record.

Kim Roberts: Yeah, and you know, that's an interesting point because one of the things that has been sort of surprising to me is at the very beginning of my journey, I remember being really surprised because I put some bad art out there on my Facebook page and people bought it. And like, really?

George Irwin: And what I learned later was that these people knew me

Kim Roberts: and they were so inspired by my passion and willingness to dive into it that they wanted a piece of that. It wasn't really about the art, clearly. It was about, yeah, the inspiration.

George Irwin: Yeah and like I guess maybe another way to look at it too is like your bravery in being vulnerable with what you're doing. That's one of the biggest challenges I think for artists is that you have to put yourself out there for people to recognize it. And that's a scary thing. And artists face like rejection all the time when they're flying into shows and trying to get their work out there, but you have to just continue to do it and trust that the right people will see it.

Kim Roberts: Yeah, and develop a thick skin. And I have to say, I think I worked through a lot of that as a yoga instructor because, you know, that practice itself, first of all, you have to work through all of your emotional baggage. There's just a huge amount of stuff you have to work though and then once you start teaching it's like yeah people come into your class and they don't like it and they walk out in the middle of class is like oh well there is rejection right in your face but it's like once you get over the fact or understand the fact that you're not going to die from those experiences, then it's just a matter of you know let it go and move on.

George Irwin: Interesting wow. So I usually like to touch on like process when I'm talking artists and these what how do you approach your paintings these days? Do you... I know you said you kind of start with like these field studies sometimes bring them back to the studio and then what happens as far as like planning your image and a larger piece you want to make from that. Yeah, so let's see where are we here?

Kim Roberts: You know honestly my process is a little bit wonky and I like it that way. I can't say that I have a thought out process. It kind of drives my boyfriend crazy. He comes in when I'm in the beginning stages of a painting and he just stands there like, you know, chomping at the bit not wanting to insult me. Because um here I'm going to turn this the other way because um like for example this painting it started in really crazy colors that did not give any sense of distance or space so So I think the mountains were green and the trees were blue or something like that. And so it did not work, but what I like to do is I love color and I love to layer on color over and over and ever. So I love texture though I don't really care what color I start with often I will start with what color is on my brush just to start getting some lines down in some forms and

Kim Roberts: start working on the composition. I mean obviously I always have a blue sky or you know maybe not obviously but often i have a Blue Sky and um and you know i'm just i'm thinking of layers as far as um sky mountains trees and foreground and I you know, I've gotten a little bit for this particular show. This is a little bit older, this is um I've gotten quite subdued and more realistic in my colors which um i'm not so sure I like. I might have to go back to you know more of my Purple Mountain Majesty color scheme. Well these are yeah oh sorry I didn't mean to interrupt you

George Irwin: but yeah so these are really fun. I mean the I like the other pieces too but But when you're talking about layering colors, people, artists like talk, especially oil painters frequently will do glaze upon glaze to achieve a certain number. And your layering is thicker I think than most and it looks like there's some scraping

George Irwin / Kim Roberts: away and all kinds of stuff happening in there.

Kim Roberts: Yeah, it's definitely something that I want to try soon, but I haven't really, I haven ventured that far yet. These actually are a little bit different process where I was scraping away. These are done with a squeegee and it's just a one-shot deal. They are wood panels that I have put some kind of medium underneath that makes the paint not stick. And so I would take, where is it? I would take this thing. Oh, I don't know where it is. It's just a bathroom squeak and you know, just scrape away the paint really quickly. And those were those were a lot of fun. And eventually, I'd like to go back to and you can see in this one here. It was the same kind of thing. Yeah, I don't think we're able to see that but that's okay. Oh, okay.

George Irwin: Oh yeah flip us around. That'll be good. Oh yeah. Are you familiar with Gerhard Richter's squeegee work? With who? Gerhard Rictors' squeegee paintings.

Kim Roberts: Oh no, I didn't know he worked in squeegees too. Well yeah, I mean he's done

George Irwin: everything right, but like I think maybe most recently his work is like are these giant things where he has these huge squeegees and pretty cool. There's a good documentary on Netflix about it. Okay I'll check it out.

George Irwin / Kim Roberts: It's kind of slow but you might have to fast forward a little bit. But that's okay, I like him so I'm okay with that. Yeah well cool. So I like that

George Irwin: you're still kind of developing your process and your style, but even so, it's like your work seems like it's very compelling throughout this evolution. Yeah, and it's great to meet you over this and to have your work in the Western Talent. And I thank you for applying and for showing with Western Gallery And thank you so much for making the time to talk today.

Kim Roberts: Yeah, and thank you so much what you're doing. I really appreciate what you are doing for emerging artists and also just for the whole Western art scene. And I love just the inspiration that you're all online. You're really one of the forerunners of that model. So yeah, I think you do a great job at it. So thanks for all your efforts. Yeah, thank you very much.

George Irwin: It's a big experiment and it's a lot of fun. Yeah, and I also wanna say thank you to everybody who's tuned in as well and check out Kim Roberts' work at western.gallery in the New Western Talent and then she's also, you can click through her to her, tap through to her Instagram profile here and then Kim what's your website address?

Kim Roberts: It's kimrobertsart.com.

George Irwin: Okay, well check that out too. Cool, all right Kim, well thanks so much. Good luck tonight, have fun with the collective show and I'll talk to you in the future.

Kim Roberts: Okay, thank you so much!

George Irwin: Bye.