New Date for Solo Show!

Art For Sale, creativity, Exhibition, Film, Gallery, Installation, Narrative

I have a BIG update ~ my solo show in Seattle has been moved up two months!

So now, “Loving & Letting Go” opens Thurs. July 3rd, 5-8pm at SlipStitch Studios. We have also scheduled a screening of my film and an artist talk later in the month. Then the show closes on August 2.

Of course, you are welcome to visit during gallery hours ~ Wed-Sat 12-5.

Additionally, I am scheduling private tours of the exhibit (on all days). If you’re interested, please DM/text/email me!! I’d love everyone who wants to see this exhibit to get a chance to experience it.

Thank you kindly.

ELIAICHI KIMARO
Loving & Letting Go

SlipStitch Studios
604 2nd Ave, Seattle
Gallery Hours: Wed – Sun, 12-5pm

EXHIBITION EVENTS

OPENING RECEPTION
July 3, 5-8pm
First Thursday Pioneer Sq Art Walk

SCREENING & DISCUSSION
A Lot Like You
July 10, 5-7:30pm
(Doors at 5, film at 5:30)

ARTIST TALK
The Narrative Throughline
July 26, 3-5pm

CLOSING RECEPTION
Sat., Aug 2, 5-8pm

EXHIBITION STATEMENT

Loving & Letting Go is a multidisciplinary body of work by Eliaichi Kimaro that reflects the emotional terrain of a life in transition. In a short span of time, Kimaro’s closest relationships have shifted — her daughter left for college, her husband relocated for work, and her parents are 9,000 miles away.
This body of work explores the emotional dichotomies shaping her life in this moment — presence and absence, intimacy and independence, acceptance and grief. Each piece holds opposing forces in conversation — stillness and motion, geometric and organic, light and dark — reflecting the tension between loving from afar while learning to let go.
Loving & Letting Go is both a personal meditation and a universal invitation to sit with complexity and to find beauty within life’s contradictions.

Origin Story – The Offering

Art For Sale, creativity, Exhibition, Gallery, Narrative, Origin story, process, Story, Works In Progress

The Offering (48″x48″): I love pieces that develop in their own time. As these paintings grow with me over months, my challenges, wishes, joys and sorrows get embedded in the layers. The painting becomes a time capsule that captures who I am and how I’m feeling as the piece evolves.

I love some of the color and energy in the earlier versions, but these passages, while pretty, were meaningless. I relish paintings where the struggle leads me to unknown places and pushes me beyond my capabilities. At their best, my paintings feel like an archeological discovery, as if I’m unearthing something that’s always been there. The finished piece is something I never could (or would) set out to paint. So these origin stories remind me of how a painting came to be…

June 15, 2023: I am both here and not here…a meditation on impermanence that is resonating with me today. And so I embedded it in the first layer of this 48″x48″ piece.

June 18: Starting to build up surface history that I can later work back into. Happy to be working large once again…

June 22: Working on large pieces in a small studio makes it hard to stand back and view the painting from a distance. So posting progress pics on Instagram scales down the image, allowing me to troubleshoot compositional problems and figure out where the piece wants to go next…🤓

June 25: Very early stages yet, but after a brief TimeOut, we’re starting to listen to each other…

Continue reading →

Transforming Trauma Into Art

Activism, creativity, family, Film, inspiration, Narrative, podcast, press, process, Speaking, Story

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE

I was recently a guest on the Future Tripping Podcast, a project of the Trauma Stewardship Institute. The host, Laura van Dernoot Lipsky, is an author/activist, an internationally recognized leader in the field of trauma exposure ~ and one of my dearest friends for the past 30+ years! As such, she holds all the pieces of my personal, family, work and creative life. At its core, our conversation reveals the depth and breadth of “making art to better understand my cultural inheritance and legacy,” and shows why art – the creation and maintenance of it – can be an essential act of liberation.💗

Artwork Archive Spotlight Interview

article, creativity, inspiration, Narrative, press, process

What an honor to be selected as Artwork Archive‘s Featured Artist of the week!!

Artwork Archive has streamlined all my business needs ~ tracking inventory and sales, invoicing, managing my art portfolio and client list, etc. Less time doing admin work means more time creating in the studio.

In this conversation with Paige Simianer, I had the opportunity to reflect on exploring identity and legacy through my art practice…

Art Magazine Article

Activism, article, creativity, Exhibition, inspiration, Narrative, press, Print, process, Story

I am delighted to be featured in the Summer issue of PublicDisplay.ART ~ Seattle’s only community-supported, arts-focused publication. What an honor to be in the company of so many artists I admire. And it’s the first time my art & story has been featured in print media!

If you’re in Seattle, you can find the magazine at 600+ local retailers, restaurants, cafes, galleries, bars and libraries around town. Or if you prefer, you can view the issue online here (I’m on pg 26-27).

PublicDisplay.ART is published by OneReel, the same organization that produces NW Folklife and Bumbershoot (among many other cultural events/projects year round).

Residency Goals

creativity, inspiration, Narrative, process, Residency, Story

I have the good fortune of spending the month of September at an international artist residency in the Champagne region in France. Chateau Orquevaux offers 2- and 4- week residencies to artists of all disciplines from around the world. This will be my first experience at an international residency.

As I close down my studio and pack my bags, I have a few goals in mind:

1. I will leave my oil and encaustic paints at home, and instead travel with acrylic paints, charcoal, ink, watercolor, crayons. And I want to work on paper so that I can pack all my work in my backpack and suitcases when I come home. Travel light. Keep it simple.

2. When COVID shut the world down, I took advantage of the increased access I had to teachers/mentors. When they went online with their course offerings, I was right there, ready to soak up their teachings. So the past 2 years for me has been a period of intensive learning about color, value, design, texture, best studio practices ~ just arming myself with knowledge to expand and deepen my ability to paint and see.

But the more I learned, the harder it became to paint instinctively. My brain became a bully, taking command of the creative process. All my choices became conscious, calculated decisions. I was thrilled to discover that I could apply what I know to resolve my painting at any stage ~ especially those early stages with fresh, energetic marks. The flipside was that I grew precious about my work, fearful about letting go and trusting that something better would emerge. As a result, my paintings ~ which used to be 20-30 layers deep ~ became very surface and shallow.

So my goal now is to find my way back to how I used to paint. I need to trust that all my learning is there and accessible if/when I need it. But I don’t want to lead with my head any more. I want to return to using my gut as my guide to painting my truth.

Belonging ~ Origin Story

creativity, Narrative, Origin story, process, Works In Progress

Belonging (2021)
Collaged transcripts, oil & cold wax medium on wood panel
36″x 60″

The daily writing practice I started when I was 7 has become the creative cornerstone of my life. Writing makes my subconscious conscious—it is my key to mining the stories I’ve inherited about who I am and where I come from. Then I head into my studio to make sense of what I have just unearthed. The act of creating shows me where I stand in the flow between cultural inheritance and legacy.

Family stories form the foundation of this painting…

June 28, 2021: A new piece has me burrowing back in to the family stories I collected for my film, A Lot Like You. I’m cutting up transcripts of stories told to me by my family on Mt. Kilimanjaro, and gluing them onto a 36″x60″ wood panel. Even in paper form, my Aunts’ stories are arresting. What a gift that time was. 17 years later, I’m still feeling the ripple effects of our conversation in the hut. (I tell the story of our time together in my 2016 TEDxSeattle talk, Why the World Needs Your Story.)

June 28, 2021 (end of day): Record breaking 110° in the studio today. Foundation laid. 15 square feet of transcripts. Calling it a day. Going to melt into a G&T!

July 13, 2021: Laying down some warm tones over the collaged transcripts ~ the first of many layers to come. I expect this painting to be a slow and steady build over the coming weeks.

July 14, 2021: Next layer on the 36″x60″ transcript painting…

July 19, 2021: Can’t stop laughing at this guy! No time to paint the last 4 days, so my starting layers totally dried. Time to start again. It’s way too early to be precious about any of this. So I get to start the day scribbling, doodling, writing, painting with colors I don’t usually use to reactivate the surface. Getting this piece from 0 to 60 so I can cruise into the week ahead…

Continue reading →

Lost In Composition – interview

Activism, collaboration, creativity, family, Film, Narrative, process, Story

I’m so grateful to art collector Paul Drinkwine for inviting me to partake in his project, Lost In Composition, “an art blog focusing on living artists and their works.” What a gift, to have this growing record of folks making art in our region at this moment in time.

Our conversation covered a 30 year span ~ starting with my activism, then moving through my work in film, photography, parenting, and finally visual art. What a rare treat to have this much time and space to reflect on my life and creative journey!

Paul created this dedicated page for our conversation which includes his reflections, images of work we discussed, and links to other artists mentioned in our conversation.

I look forward to seeing who he selects for future episodes…

Winter/Spring Art News…

Art For Sale, collaboration, creativity, education, Exhibition, Gallery, inspiration, Narrative, process, Speaking, Story

Just published my Newsletter with updates on 1) creative collaborations with filmmakers, authors, musicians & chefs, 2) my foray into teaching, and 3) shows in venues around town.

You can click the Subscribe button at the top of the page if you would like receive my newsletters (I send out 2-3 a year).

“Composing a Life” – Acrylic mixed media on 24″x 24″ wood shipping panel.

Memorial Day (Commission) – Origin Story

collaboration, creativity, inspiration, Narrative, Origin story, process, Story, Works In Progress

This Spring, I received a captivating commission request. Chris Weber and Jack Gingrich were long-time employees and soon-to-be co-owners of The Herbfarm, a restaurant that creates thematic 9-course dinners showcasing the exceptional seasonal food and wines of the Pacific Northwest.

In his initial email, Chris shared The Herbfarm’s compelling origin story. Theirs is an inter-generational story of hope, ambition, success, tragedy, resilience, and grace. At its essence, this painting would be about inheritance and legacy ~ my creative core. As I read it, I could clearly see how every layer of this painting could correspond to a chapter in The Herbfarm’s life.

On our site visit, a few more things came into focus. The decor of the restaurant is formal Victorian, which is not in my artistic wheelhouse. Having an abstract piece was going to be a departure, so I wanted to keep it simple, organic and elegant. I wanted the painting to feel like a weathered, textured rock face you might encounter on a hike. Against the dark walls, this statement piece would be mostly white and monochromatic. We decided on a diptych with a circle connecting the two halves, but wanted to make sure the two halves could also stand on their own. And mimicking the restaurant’s palette, I limited my paint palette to natural, earth-based pigments ~ ochres, umbers, saffron, indigo…

The following process photos show the evolution of this painting. The captions are pulled from Chris’s initial email…but you can find a beautiful rendition of The Herbfarm’s history on their website.