"Tropicali" Painting

I paint sunshine. My work lives somewhere between Southern California and the islands — where surf culture meets modern design. No matter the medium, I’m chasing the same thing: that instant lift in your chest when the colors hit you just right. I enjoy pulling inspiration from my home in Southern California and my family’s roots in Hawaii to combine it with my love for Mid-Century Modernism and minimal design. My work features bold shapes, vibrant color, and playful compositions to reflect the essence of the places I love — giving homage to artists like Henri Matisse with my shapes, Mark Rothko with my emotion-evoking colors and layering translucent colors, Josef Albers out of my love for color, and Wayne Thiebaud through my use of small pops of color and accenting my edges. Each series I complete is done with one of these themes in mind: Citrus, Blooms, Tropical Waters, and California Style interiors. Colors, patterns, motifs, and shapes that come together to reflect the essence of the places I love. Since I mainly work in two mediums, acrylic and oil/cold wax, I will rotate which one I'd like to use for a series. My acrylic paintings have a sense of luminosity when experienced in-person, created from multiple sheer layers of pigment. This layering process also creates fun optical illusions—colors that appear green to our eyes were actually created through the careful layering of yellow over blue. And so on. My oil and cold wax paintings have a natural texture to them, almost akin to printmaking, giving them a more vintage aesthetic. ARTIST BIO Kristen is an award-winning and published full-time artist and art instructor in Southern California. She graduated from art school at Middle Tennessee State University with a degree in Art Education, that focused on painting, book arts and printmaking, and has been teaching realism painting since 2004 and abstract painting since 2018. Kristen currently works in three mediums: acrylic, oil/cold wax, and colored pencil. She lives in Poway, CA where she works out of her home studio. Her work is currently represented through Janssen Artspace in Palm Springs CA, Libby Silvia Artstyle in Boston MA, Liza Pruitt in Richmond VA, Sandstone Gallery in Laguna Beach CA, and Sorelle Gallery in Westport CT.