Medway Cultural Council's Artist Spotlight - Portrait artist Kim Blenkhorn!
This month, we will put the spotlight on portrait artist Kim Blenkhorn! Kim is a self-taught artist working in many mediums. Her favorites are watercolor, acrylic, and graphite. She has been teaching art for many years. Please enjoy her beautiful portrait of Maya Angelou.
1. Tell us about your art!
My art of choice is pencil work. I use graphite pencils to draw on a variety of papers including watercolor, gray-toned, tan toned, and smooth white. I also use a variety of graphite pencils from hard to soft and dark. Black and white portraits are my areas of expertise working from reference photos and often images I gather from the internet. I draw daily and it takes me about a week to finish a portrait. I like natural lighting, even when the lighting is later in the day. I find that the more I study my subjects the better and more detailed my pictures are. I also tend to draw what I see, not what I know or think. A mouth is not a mouth; it is a shape, a line, a shadow. Proportions matter a great deal and I use my eraser a lot. I would love to find a way to make my art into a business.
2. What inspires you?
I am inspired by people who, in my opinion, have a respectable reason to be remembered. They have overcome great difficulty in life. They have accomplished something unique. They have had great faith in the face of fear. They have displayed bravery. In essence, they have done something unique and changed the course of history and oftentimes their struggles have been personal and their journey against all odds in some way resonates with my own journey. It is men and women and children who have, without the approval or regard or support of peers, done something of grand proportions.
I draw people whom I admire - authors, such as J.R.R Tolkien, Malcolm Gladwell, or Maya Angelou, artists such as Norman Rockwell or Grandma Moses, geniuses such as Einstein, and hard workers like Tom Brady. I have drawn presidents who had to make hard decisions, leaders who have struggled with depression i.e. Winston Churchill or Abraham Lincoln, and prisoners like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Nelson Mandela, as well as missionaries who have traveled across the world and risked their lives to tell people about God and help feed the hungry. I write about the people I draw too.
Sometimes a group moves me - oppressed peoples or minority populations. This past year, I drew Ruby Bridges and Rosa Parks after the George Floyd shooting. I am moved by social injustice. I have drawn people of faith who stepped out to do something sacrificial such as Corrie Ten Boom. I am drawn very much to portraits of people and they are the lives they live that is what inspires my greatest art pieces.
3. How did you get started in making your art? What drew you into the field?
I have been drawing since I was young. However, I didn't always have the confidence. I was always interested in faces but feared greatly the task of asymmetry. Even now, when I sit down to draw, my first thought (which I have to push away) is, "I can't do this." I remember drawing only profiles for a long time. In high school, I attempted to master facial features. I would just work on eyes or noses. The more I practiced over the years, the more I improved. Sadly, I went to a small private high school that didn't offer art. Therefore, I never had an art class in high school. I took a few community ed classes as an adult, but have had next to no formal training or education in art. On my own, I began to dabble in watercolor, acrylic, and oil during this exploration, I found that the sketches preceding my paintings were really where my talent and enjoyment lie. It however was a casual pleasure and pastime I engaged in, as my main job has always been a stay at home mom and part-time teacher.
A few years ago, during a Patriots game, Tom's Brady's eyes struck me as mysterious and, I thought, "I'm going to draw him." I did and was surprised at how well it turned out. I had started with a soft dark pencil (6b) on watercolor paper, which is a rough tooth of the paper, and it gave me the ability to start. I then moved to Mother Teresa and Einstein. While the details needed work, I discovered I had finally the finesse I needed to get proportions correct. I had learned how to begin with large muscle work on my arm to do things like facial structure and then move to finer details using fine muscles, my fingers, and the finest details with very tiny movements of fingertips provided. Over time, the more I drew the more I experimented with different grades of paper and different amounts of pressure and pencils, and the plain truth is you just learn things as you give it your time and attention. I learned what worked the more I practiced. I also discovered the cell phone was a great resource as I am able to zoom in to see details in a face that I may not have been able to prior. The tiniest shadow under the lip, the slightest curve beside the eye. These define someone's characteristics more than I would have thought. As my confidence grew in producing likeness, I took on more projects. I decided I wanted to draw all those people who inspired and mentored me in life and write about them. I also think art is the way my brain works. Whatever I do in life tends to be filtered through this way of thinking - creating, exploration, experimentation, observation. Thinking outside the box and looking for new ways to do something.
4. How long have you lived in Medway? What drew you to this town?
I have lived in Medway for 18 years! My husband grew up here and his father was a townie -Hal Blenkhorn - who has made my hall of fame.
5. How can people experience your work? Do you have a website/gallery?
myfaithplace.blog is a blog where I post a lot of my artwork and often an essay or piece of writing to accompany the portraits. Right now, this is the best way, although I am open to ideas and platforms. I would love to have a gallery at the library at some point. I have begun to frame many of my portraits in a unique way and a special way that I do not show on my webpage.
6. Describe your favorite meal.
Ha! I am an artist so cooking is another one of the ways I express creativity. I love ethnic foods but in particular, I love Indian foods and Middle Eastern cuisine. Basmati rice, goat curry, shawarma.