How Life Shapes Art: Kim Case on an Evolving Process, and Painting

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Dr. Lisa Belisle: Hello, I'm Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to or watching Radio Maine, our video podcast where we explore and celebrate creativity and the human spirit. Today I have with me one of our Portland Art Gallery artists, Kim Case, who has been with the gallery for really a number of years and it's been a pleasure for me to already have interviewed her, but she's back again. We're going to talk about sort of the deepening of her work and it's appropriate given that our podcast is sponsored by the Portland Art Gallery. So Kim, thanks so much for coming in today.

Kim Case: Oh, thank you for asking. I'm happy to be here.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: I love having the chance to talk to artists more than once, really anybody who does anything in the creative space more than once. Because I think that sometimes people's lives take different turns, they have different experiences, or they just start dabbling in a different process. They have a different subject matter that they want to explore. I'm not even sure that people completely understand this themselves sometimes, but what have you been up to since you and I last talked about your art?

Kim Case: Big question. It's been almost, I think, eight years or something like that. But I was looking over actually some of my older work and comparing it to my newer work. And while it's not the same, and I hope I've improved on a skill level aspect, the themes are still there. The themes of playing at the edges of abstract, the themes of nature and our human, maybe not humans in nature, but the shadow of humans or their presence within the painting are all still there. But new things have been ... My son who last we talked was probably very young and now he's 15 going into high school. So that's had a huge effect on myself and my work and our family in all of those ways. And yeah, as far as process wise, we've moved house, so I've adjusted to new studio space, incorporating, trying to find the best light as I move around the house in that space. Yeah, many things.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Let's start talking about your studio space and finding good light because I wonder if people who are not necessarily trying to paint or do something with visual art, I wonder if they understand what it means to have the right kind of setup from a lighting standpoint. Talk to me about that. And knowing that you have this whole background in art, you focused on photography and art history while studying at the school of the Museum of Fine Arts and Tufts. So what ... I mean, there's like sort of the theoretical underpinnings of why we need light, but as somebody who has been a photographer and understands practically why we need light, talk to me about your space and what you've gone through to try to get the right setup.

Kim Case: Thank you. Yes. So for practically, north light is the best light to have some kind of a window. It's consistent light throughout the day. So it provides even light. Usually it's not very direct, so you don't get too much sun or too much shadow. So finding a corner of the house that has that consistency has been the challenge, but I found one, fortunately, which is nice. You don't want light that's too cool or too warm because that will affect, you never know where your piece is going to be hanging. So you want to keep something as neutral as possible, whether it's somebody might hang it near a window so it'll be a little more warm. And if your painting is already impacted by being under a warm light, it does affect the end result because you're thinking in advance of where it's going to be. You need to think in advance of what's my light and my lighting going to be as I set up. So yeah. Other considerations are noise and how much foot traffic you get as you move through the house. Just aspects like that and how much privacy and space you can feel to get a separation for yourself, like you can walk through a door and be like, "Okay, I'm ready to work now."

Dr. Lisa Belisle: That's an important thing because I think a lot of people, they're like, "Well, I can work on my kitchen table." And that's completely fine. And also to have a place that's just mentally set aside, "Oh, this is my creative space. This is where I'm going to go." So even if you decide you're going to work at your kitchen table, you decide to work during a time of day where you can turn it into a space that you enter into creatively, but it certainly is nice if you have a room as you do that can act as a physical separation.

Kim Case: And I think having a room and claiming a room or a corner as your own where you can leave your work behind and come back to it is part of being professional. It's a signal to yourself as you walk through the door, "I'm here, I'm ready to work, and I want this to be worthwhile of my time, and the work I produce, I want it to carry something to have meaning." So it's an honoring of yourself and your work as well. Whereas if I were to set up on the kitchen counter, I think it might feel a little more hobby oriented, which is great in its own right too.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: I've had the opportunity to visit artists in their different studio setups. And I think obviously everybody has a different way of doing it, but one studio that I went to recently, it was actually its own separate buildings and there was more than one. And I absolutely had that sense that you just described. That is a very big commitment to what is now your, I don't want to call it your job, but I guess your profession that you are saying, "This is what I am doing. I have this spot that is mine because this is my work."

Kim Case: I've had a studio in the past and I miss it. At our previous house we did. It was so nice to be able to walk out the door, maybe carry your cup of coffee and turn on the lights and go. That's not where life has taken me at the moment. So I'm making the best do what I can and I feel part of having as much experience now as I do, that I do have a better sense that I can work where I need to work and get the things that I need done. Whereas before I might have said like, "Oh, I need this or I need that." I'm like, it pairs down. You quickly learn or over time you learn, what do I really need to have and around me in order to work?

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Well, I'm glad that you also brought up your son being now 15 because having spoken to people at different stages of, I'll say family rearing, because for some people, maybe it's a child, but for other people they're caring for an adult parent, for example, but different needs of other people around them shift over time. So you, with a 15 year old, certainly it's a lot different than when they're five and they need you to cut up their apples for lunch and they're 15, they can kind of fend for themselves, but you also don't want them, you don't want to leave them alone too long. Just you kind of need to be there having raised number of 15 year olds myself. So I think this ability to sort of know what you need at its core, but then also be able to kind of move and shift in your life and not just say, "Well, I'll just wait till the conditions are ideal." I think that's a really powerful thing for people to understand as they're looking at your artwork on the wall that you've needed to continue to engage in that navigation of life, I guess.

Kim Case: The impact of having a child, and we've also been through ... Well, we went through COVID since I last talked to you, at which point we had parents in the house. I had my mother-in-law who was living with us for a year. So you do have to be very intentional with your time and really put on ... We're talking about professionalism, you really have to put on that professional hat, "This is my work, this is the time, this is where I need to go and be with it." But also having a kiddo in a house, whereas before I may have felt like more free with my work, now I feel more intentional professionally. I want my work to have consistency across time, because it's reflected back to me so often in my son, he sees every part of me, and as he watches me grow into me grow into the work and I watch him grow, but he sees me develop and I want him to see me develop in good ways. I have to be ... It's like, yeah, I'm not doing very well at explaining this, but it's essentially, I want to do well at the work because I know that I'm setting an example.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: That's such a powerful thing that you're describing, this idea of role modeling as a parent. I mean, there's what we tell our children, and then there's how we show up in the world. And so you can tell your child something, but if they see you showing up in the world a different way, then they get a really ... It's kind of a dissonance. So if you can actually model what you hope for them to take away from your relationship, that can have a pretty big impact, I think.

Kim Case: No doubt, no doubt. And you can see it right away. You can get a sense right back. They don't hold back on their feedback of you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: And you know this because you are at the gallery openings with me. I mean, I've had my ... We've had our sons, we've had our daughters, we now have a grandchild that comes into the gallery, so absolutely they see you interacting with other people. They see you, in your case, standing up to give artist remarks. You brought a group over from Waynflete, a parent group over from Waynflete. So our kids really are paying attention to ... So in your case, your son's paying attention to the art that you do, but also paying attention to, this is how I bring my art to people in the world. This is how I interact with others. And that is ... I don't want to say that means you have to behave, because I guess we all try to pave anyway, but that intentionality around just existing in the world and communicating with others, I think sometimes is more than we understand while we're going through it.

Kim Case: They see us and reflect back to us our shortcomings and where we're standing up. You can see the pride in their eyes when they walk into the gallery and they know that mom's work is up there. It's really lovely feeling.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: And that is one of my favorite things about going to the gallery openings is when people bring their children with them to the openings and they stand in front of the pieces that they've worked so hard to create. And it's not just children, it's sometimes significant others and other family members, sometimes it's parents, but I do particularly love it when they bring in the children and the grandchildren and it's like, "Here's this thing, I made it. Isn't it wonderful?"

Kim Case: It was really fun last night to see little ones at the gallery and you could see they're making the connection like, "Grandma's up there talking and grandma's work is here. That must mean my grandma is great." It was really fun to see.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Which is really important when it comes to art because creating art, I mean, it is a very specific kind of work. It's joyful, it's wonderful, but I also, having seen so many artists over the years, I mean, you have to get up every single day and you have to engage sometimes in experimental, "Is this going to get me what I need? Is this brushstroke? Is this process? Is this pigment?" And it's not easy because it's not like somebody says, "Well, if you do A, B, and C, then you get an A or you get a job that pays you a certain amount of money."

Kim Case: There's very few jobs in the world where you're actually pulling the job out of your head as you go, right? Other than, well, the creative work of writing, et cetera, but definitely as a painter, you're sitting here ... Sorry about that. As a painter, you're sitting here pulling out your creative ideas and it's a culmination of your memories, things that maybe you've collected to remind you, their ideas you saw, maybe going to somebody else's show and you're like, "Wow, I love the way they contrasted that color. I want to try that." The way that subject matter informs so much, and yet all of that has to be things that feels like it's made. It's like a made up job, which in some ways sounds so awesome and so fun, but if you're not willing to trust what's inside your head, then you're kind of going to run out of ideas pretty quickly.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: I think that's key. I think this idea that a made up job sounds fun. I mean, sure, it sounds fun, but it also sounds hard because I think sometimes the external structure that we get from being employed or being in an educational degree program, I mean, that's somebody else who's like, "Okay, here you go. Here's your menu. I'm going to tell you what to make and what to eat." And whereas if you're an artist, I mean, you have to really believe in what you're making because your stuff's going to be on that wall at that opening and people are going to look at it and you have to feel really good about having gone through that.

Kim Case: You're right. And I don't think that I've had a successful period where I haven't had to take it and treat myself like my own boss, where I've written ... I literally have a spreadsheet of my work where I put down, "Okay, this is what I've created, these are the sizes. Okay, these seem to do okay. I really like the way that these came out. Let's move in that direction and I'll buy canvases in advance." So that gives me a structure to follow that I, okay, I'm going to be working on this kind of a series. So these are the sizes that I want to incorporate and these are the surfaces I want to work on. So yeah, treating it like a job for yourself for me is actually the only way I can produce in a consistent, positive manner where I have a body of work at the end of it and feel like, yes, that was ... I didn't all just make that up on the fly because it looks it. I know there are amazing artists who out there who can do it, but I need to put more thought into ... And approaching it as a body of work instead of individual pieces.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: So as we're talking about your body of work, I'm wondering about this back and forth that you've described with abstraction because as somebody who has paid attention to your work and you have, for many years, you spent early summers at Squam Lake, for example, you have a very strong New England connection, you have a lot of sort of New Hampshire mountains and you have the Maine coastline, and so there's a landscape element to it, but I'm fascinated to learn more about abstraction, considering that photography, which is very, it's very much realism, at least I think in the work that you were doing as somebody who also is in publishing, that seems it doesn't completely align in my mind. So I want to hear like the ... What's the interest for you? How have you been exploring that for yourself?

Kim Case: It's very similar as I move into abstraction, it's a very similar experience to where I first began painting it all. So as a photographer, you are literally capturing on film or digitally what you're seeing. And even the slight abstraction of applying and putting that image down on paint is a slight abstraction from what you see. And at first I was, as you know, I was very drawn to realism and becoming the most realistic painter. Part of that was because I felt I had to in order to justify this move of becoming a painter. I felt like, "Oh, if I'm going to be a painter, then I really need to be able to represent things and be really good at drawing and have things look ultra realistic in order for it to be accepted by my friends and family and myself and to accept myself as a painter." But as I'm moving forward, I'm more and more drawn or gone further down this path, I should say, into abstraction because what I'm after is the same thing that I was after when I left photography as an art form and moved into painting, which is the expression of color, form, light, as having a vibrational and an emotional impact. I had incredible ... My stepmother's mom was, her name was Kit Sims and she was an incredible artist and painted mostly abstractly. You could see forms and mountains in nature and her work, but the color was absolutely off the charts. It was just jewel tones and exploding lights and pinks where there should be greens and that ... And you look at her work and you just feel incredibly joyful and emotional in it. And you don't really know why, because it doesn't reflect what you actually see when you go out for a walk in the woods. And I wanted to be able to be that good, where my work could excite, inform, bring up emotions without it necessarily being tied to exactly the image that I was trying to get. "Oh, it's a pretty flower. It's a beautiful flower that's lovely. You could do that in painting and you could do that in photography and the incredible skill that artists have when they're able to represent a beautiful flower, but to have that flower represented abstracted to the point where it's just a few breath strokes and you still get that emotion, I think there's something exciting in that. And honestly, I'm not even sure why. I don't even know why that's exciting for me. It just is. And it's a language in itself, an abstraction. It pairs things down when art is abstracted with color and light or color and form, because that's all you get and being able to represent those and have them bring out emotion, I think can be even more challenging than let's say a painting of a cute puppy, which is going to ... Oh, isn't that cute? Bringing up an emotion, yes. But to be able to paint something that sits with someone and every time they look at it and they go, "Oh yes, they have that wonderful lift from it as well. It's kind of what I'm going for.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: That description of sort of the vibrations and this idea that there's sort of an energetic something that comes across with abstraction. I mean, and yes, you're right, you can get the same sort of emotions and these pieces can generate thoughts if you have a hyper realistic piece, but it's almost like you as the artist are talking through your art to somebody else who's experiencing your art, which is abstracted and you're like bypassing, almost bypassing the brain in a way. It's exciting to think about that, right? It's kind of weird in a way, but also very exciting, like that you're working towards something that you don't even completely understand yourself.

Kim Case: That's a good point. I think about that to be hard about that. I'm not sure I pick up a paintbrush again.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: But it goes back to trust, right? I mean, you don't necessarily have to understand it to trust that you are doing something that still is speaking to people in a way that goes beyond words or goes beyond a strict visual representation.

Kim Case: And it becomes more intuitive within yourself as well as you approach your work and you're working in a painting and you lay down a mark and something and you goes, "No." And you're not even sure why it just goes ... Maybe that line moves and it's blocking the feeling of accessibility of the rest of the painting or the color is not in vibration with the rest of the colors that are on the palette or on the canvas, but something in you goes, "No, and it just doesn't work for you." I think a lot of people who are looking at art go, "Yeah, that's a great painting. I don't know why I don't like it, but there's like that feeling." Or the opposite as well of like, "Yes, I feel like I'm onto something there." Though if you're an artist, you go through that cycle that's four times in a painting, you get this idea, "Oh, it's going to be great. You lay down the sketch. It's going to be awesome. Oh, you lay down the underpainting. This is really looking good. " You lay down that first layer of paint, you're like, "Oh my God, what am I doing? This is trash. I need to toss it out and go." And if you can push through that, I find that's that down cycle, then you're back up again after you work it some more. And hopefully at the end you're happier than where you started in that trough. You must talk to a lot of artists who have that experience of this trough feeling at some point in the painting.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: I've heard this before and I also, one of the questions that I end up asking and getting different answers on is how do you know when it's done? And so what you're describing again is this sort of intuitive sense that you've gone through the peak and the trough and now you are going to lay down your brush. And although I also know having been affiliated with the galleries for so many years now, that people, artists regularly take back their work if it hasn't sold and they'll be like, "Yeah, I'm going to rework that." So it was done at that time, but maybe it's no longer done. And this is what painters have done for a long time, artists have done for a long time is going over their work and like, "Okay, I'm going to either completely obliterate it and reuse the canvas or I'm going to like, I don't know, do something else that's going to accent things in a different way."

Kim Case: Yeah. I think a lot of times, of course, I noticed this in others before I turn the spotlight on myself and noticed it in myself that a lot of times our first round of paintings are not brave enough. They're not brave enough. There's something that's missing that we're too afraid to mess up what we've got going on already. And we think, "Oh, this looks just great the way it is and sure, maybe somebody will buy it." You don't want to push that edge too much, but the ones that don't sell, it's like the clients know they can almost feel live. There's something more that could be there. And when you take it back, which occasionally happens and work on it and then create something a little bit more in it and add some element that maybe you weren't brave enough with, it can be kind of cool and exciting. And also by that time, if you've had a chance to sit with it, which is why sometimes I don't bring art into the gallery for a while, partly because it has to dry. I use oil paint, so that take a long time, but also because I don't want ... I want to make sure that what I go out doesn't have too much of a feeling of not quite being done yet, or that I chickened out on it, and leaving it for a while gives me the space to not be so emotionally invested in what I've already done.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: I like that idea of putting things aside. And I know with my writing, I often, if I have something that I know I need to finish for whatever reason, I never just say, "Okay, now I'm done," and then submit it to wherever it's going to be published. I always leave a little space if I can to say, "Okay, I have to go back and take a second look and just make sure it's not just to catch errors and such, but it's also, is there some part that doesn't flow well?" So I can really relate to that. And also, I spend time, especially having talked to so many artists, it's really inspired me to put paint on paper. And what I've really enjoyed myself is trying different ways of trying to make something look good on paper. And if I give myself so many tries and it doesn't look good, I actually have a paper cutter and I just cut it into bookmarks and I'm like, "All right, now it can look different in a different form. Maybe I'll like it, maybe I won't." And sometimes I actually end up really liking the bookmarks, that this is something like it didn't look great there, but it looks okay in this form. So I think I'm good with that. And this is something that I think some artists do, what you just described is you sort of give yourself, "I have a process, I do so many of this thing, and then I'm just done. I'm going to say I am done with this." I mean, you have a spreadsheet, you have the things that you need to accomplish, you're going to get through those things, and then that's how you get from point A to point B.

Kim Case: Yeah, I probably have a touch of ADD, so I need a little help staying in the moment and having a spreadsheet of ideas or canvases that I know that I want to complete is very helpful. But yeah, becoming less ... Painting is physical work, sitting and being there at the moment is physical work, staying with your butt in the chair and making something happen. You're investing a lot of time and if things become over precious sometimes when you're spending a lot of time on a particular piece and having that space, a little bit of distance allows me the opportunity to go, "Okay, it's been a little while, maybe I'll pick up a different piece and start feeling precious about that so that I can come back to the other one with a much more practical eye." Actually, my husband is a really wonderful sounding board in my work as well. He is not a fan of abstract art, but he can definitely feel when things are working and when they're not. And I'd love to bring him in and kind of get his engagement on just an initial feedback. And he actually been pretty spot on, I have to say, for someone who isn't a huge art fan, even though he's very supportive of me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: You bring forward something that I find fascinating and that is when I first started being interested in art, I didn't understand abstract art and I kind of was like, this is the classic like, "How's that art? Somebody just put a bunch of color blocks up on like how much work could that have been?" But what I've actually come to understand about myself is that I really adore abstract art. So when you tell me that you are doing more with abstraction, I can't wait to see your pieces because it's something that I didn't know that I liked way back when, but I like it so much more now having spent so much time with other sorts of art. I find it just very exciting. And I wonder if your husband, through having hung out with you all these years, he's absorbed so much more than he maybe even realizes and is able to then kind of translate that into a different sort of appreciation for what you're doing.

Kim Case: Yeah. I think there's a excitement in abstract art. When we've been looking at realistic art, our home lives or creating realistic art in my case, and then moving into what happens if I don't try to define this tree so much and it just becomes a gesture or what happens if this island becomes something that's floating versus something solidly anchored? And how does that make you feel about the painting and what am I trying to say with that? Or I just painted a painting with a fire in a field with nothing else around it. And it's not terribly abstract. You can still tell it's a bonfire of sorts, but leaving it devoid of human experience or interaction around it says something completely different, abstracted. You're taking something that you would normally see and placing it outside where you expect it to be is a completely different message. And there's an intuitive excitement that people feel about that, whether or not they know that they like abstract or not. I think those who look at, and myself in the past, for sure, have looked at abstract art and said, "Ah, I could paint that. Throw down some paint and squiggle things around." You quickly learn that you can't. It doesn't work quite so great. I mean, there's a lot more to it than just throwing down some paint. You're still moving ideas and energy and vibration around. It's really, really cool.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: It's very true. Well, Kim, as always, I've enjoyed our conversation today. I'm so glad that you've been willing to come back and have a follow up with me. And I have enjoyed watching what you've done with your pieces over the years at the Portland Art Gallery. Do you have any upcoming shows that you're a part of at the Portland Art Gallery?

Kim Case: No, I missed the boat actually on that one.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Okay. So we'll say not yet. However, you're part of every show every month at the Portland Art Gallery because you still, you have-

Kim Case: What I love about the gallery is that they're willing to show new pieces as I bring them in. And so I feel like it's ongoing. I had a show, I think it was last year, which I love doing and I hope to do one next year, but yeah, just timing.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: That's okay because also in addition to being able to see individual pieces of yours on the gallery walls, at any time people can go to the Portland Art Gallery website and see all kinds of your work. And I happen to know this because I've spent a fair amount of time with your work on the Portland Art Gallery website and it's very beautiful there as well. So I encourage people to take advantage of the fact that it's always there in its digital form and they're able to kind of see where you're going with all of this, but I find it exciting and I really appreciate your coming in and talking with me today.

Kim Case: Oh, absolutely. Always a pleasure to be here. And yes, the gallery does a beautiful job of highlighting and promoting the work in ways that takes a lot of load off of me. So I love being engaged with you guys.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Well, the pleasure is ours and I will suggest that those of you who have been paying attention to our conversation would like to learn more that you go to the Portland Art Gallery website. And Kim is a regular at our opening. So even if Kim doesn't have an opening this year's per se as of yet, you still will get a chance to meet her and you will still get a chance to see her stuff on the gallery walls. I'm Dr. Lisa Belisle. You've been listening to our watching Radio Maine sponsored by the Portland Art Gallery. We've been exploring celebrating creativity and the human spirit with one of our Portland Art Gallery artists, Kim Case. Thanks for joining us, Kim.

Kim Case: Thank you, Lisa.