KIRSTEN SIMS
Goodnight Moon, 2020
Mixed media on Italian cotton
1525 x 1825 mm Framed
“In response to being confined to a small space with a tiny newborn, this body of work is a reflection on the early lockdown months of 2020. I started reading an old classic, Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown, to my son every night at around the same time as our one bedroom flat became our entire universe.”
- Kirsten Sims
“The act of reading the same story out loud every night, over and over again, became a meditative ritual. The story is poetically simple and its words have a way of gently lulling one to sleep as the bunny says goodnight, one by one, to all the familiar things in the room. The story started to reflect my relationship to our flat; the way it became our whole world and the way the plant in the corner and the light fittings and the paintings on the walls became these objects of total fascination to my one-month-old baby.”
- Kirsten Sims
This exhibition features a combination of mixed media paintings on Italian cotton and board. Sims' subject matter for Goodnight Moon ranges from vistas, portraits, landscapes, nightscapes, animated crowd scenes, to intimate domestic moments; with images drawn from the Artist's new life as a mother, themes from the book, familiar landscapes, as well as narratives both real and imagined. Each highly unique piece has been brought to life by the Artist's extremely vivid imagination and much-loved sense of humour; for which her work has become so renowned.
“I’m inspired by colour and light and mood. The way light changes things. The way colours change when the light changes. The drama of the natural elements. But I’m just as inspired by human drama – I find people’s moods and expressions and interactions with each other quite intriguing.”
- Kirsten Sims
KIRSTEN SIMS
Highly Strung, 2020
Mixed media on Italian cotton
1425 x 1825 mm Framed
“I'm driven by a deep need to express myself freely. Whether through words, play, dance, or art. I'm also driven to create a platform for myself where I can say what I want to say, to be a bit wild and silly and to have fun doing it. Painting gives me immense pleasure and satisfaction.”
- Kirsten Sims
“If I have to illustrate something or someone specific for a job then I often make a sketch first, but in my own work I prefer to just jump straight in and see what happens. I love the thrill of not planning first. Sometimes it goes really, really, wrong but sometimes it leads to a new way of working. I learnt early on that the flops make the nicest marks so now I really embrace accidental mark making. The outcome very rarely meets my original expectations. I'll be painting a person and their hair gets a bit out of control and then suddenly they become a tree and then I'm like, oh this is a forest scene now.”
- Kirsten Sims
