Kim Schmitt Thomas

While stylistically influenced by graffiti, torn layers of city billboards, old building walls, I float between allowing a painting to organically determine its own direction and expression, and deliberately choosing subject matters that range from personal to controversial, painful to provocative, ironic to bizarre. Much of the stories that I paint are taken from people’s everyday lives, including my own, or statements about common, yet questionable, societal behaviors that have become generally accepted as the norm. Because the “everyday” is something that often gets overlooked or seen with indifference, I fill my paintings with commotion, perplexity, exaggeration and over-simplification in order to grab the viewer’s attention and cause them to really observe, decipher, and hopefully see these everyday happenings from a new perspective.   

With the use of acrylics, joint compound, spray paint, water soluble crayons, pencils and graphite, sometimes newspaper/magazines, and several finishing coats of polycrylic, I overlap and intertwine figures, faces, shapes, text and objects. By doing this, I feel I have almost unlimited space within the confinement of the four walls of the canvas. My work is often filled with action and ch...

Kim Schmitt Thomas was born in 1970 in the Hell’s Kitchen area of NYC to two young actors, then later raised in nearby Bergen County, NJ, where she currently works and resides with her husband and 5 year old twin girls. Her early childhood was often spent drawing caricatures of flamboyant dancers and actors in theatre wings and dressing rooms, after being inspired by an Al Hirschfeld drawing of her mom. She also spent many afternoons studying graffiti covered billboards on the streets of the city while bar hopping with her retired longshoreman babysitter. Those early years, along with her own extensive training in dance and acting, have had a great influence on her work.

After attending the University of Bridgeport in the late 80s where she majored in Illustration, Kim transferred into the Fine Arts program at Montclair State University, while she freelanced as an illustrator designing program covers and logos for small NYC theatre companies, as well as creating animated logos for the TV/film production company, Bert Stratford Productions. For many years, Kim also worked as an interior artist/muralist with Of The Essence Designs, with whom she painted on-site works in various businesses and private homes in NY and NJ. Howeve...

GALLERY REPRESENTATION-
CINQ Gallery, Dallas, Texas (Design District)
WALL Gallery, Dallas, Texas (2016-closing 2017)
SOLO EXHIBITIONS-
2017- KIM WUZ HERE!, May 13- June 18, CINQ Gallery, Dallas, Texas
2016- Intermezzo Gallery, Bergen Performing Arts Center, Englewood, NJ- Truth or Dare
2016- Gallery 691, Wyckoff, NJ- Truth or Dare
2006- The Park Avenue Club, Florham Park, NJ

GROUP EXHIBITIONS-
2018- MAD Gallery, NYC, Chelsea, NYC, NY
2018- Represented Gallery Artists Group Show, CINQ Gallery, Dallas, TX
2018- State of the Art 2018, Studio Montclair Galleries, Montclair, NJ
2017- Ember and Smoke, CINQ Gallery, Dallas, TX
2017- Autumnation, CINQ Gallery, Dallas, TX
2017- Summer Exhibition, CINQ Gallery, Dallas, TX
2017- Text Me, Pierro Gallery, South Orange, NJ
2017- 53rd Annual Bergen County Art in the Park Juried Show, Paramus, NJ
2017- State of the Art 2017, Studio Montclair Inc, Montclair, NJ
2016- 52nd Annual Bergen County Art in the Park Juried Show, Paramus, NJ (winner)
2016- CAT Walk Art Exhibition, Hackensack, NJ
2016- Art Slope Arts Festival, Park Slope, Brooklyn, NY
2016- Back Story, SMI Galleries @ Academy Square, Montclair, NJ
2015- Viewpoints 2015, Studio Montclair’s 18th Annual Open Juried Exhi...