Kim Goldfarb, artist, Albuquerque, NM
Racial and cultural issues
“My work is figurative, depicting mainly women and girls. Some have called my paintings portraits, and I guess in some ways they are. However, I don’t set out to paint a portrait of a particular person and I don’t use live models. Sometimes I browse photographs of people I don’t know as reference points for paintings. Old black and white snapshots are some of my favorites. The expression on the sitter’s face is often what attracts me; In many of my paintings a lone woman stares solemnly, directly at the viewer. The only narrative in the painting is with the viewer. These women want to engage us, to be seen and understood.
My subjects echo my own feelings. Growing up in the deep South with the yearning to be an artist wasn’t easy. I was a shy child and spent a lot of time alone cultivating my imagination. My latest body of work speaks of my childhood. I grew up around African American women and I admired their strength, courage and determination. My own mother told me she didn’t want me, and I was basically raised by an African-American teenager, my babysitter, who showed me the only love I knew at the time. She was the only source of affection or attention I found in my childhood, and the most profound thing to me about that was that she was so young. The schools were desegregated in my small town when I was in middle school. What I saw and what I experienced personally in those formative years deeply affected me. My intent is to honor these women and children of color and to portray the strength I see in them through my own experience and the resulting paintings.”
Kim Goldfarb received her BFA degree in drawing and painting at the University of Georgia. She pursued a painting career and gallery directorships in Chicago simultaneously for seventeen years. In the early 90’s she changed direction in her art endeavors and began working in figurative sculpture.
Kim Goldfarb, Albuquerque, NM
Video
Kim in her studio