Kirsten Valentine

About Kirsten Valentine

I am a figurative painter and my work explores the movement of the human form and the emotion expressed by said movement. Much of my work is seemingly incomplete, large areas are left white and unpainted, an eye and a nose are all that makes up a face, limbs appear unconnected to a visible form, the environment is unseen, paint is smeared, scraped, and wiped away. My process relies as much on erasure as on creation. I like other people’s trash. I find a piece of detritus and extract my own meaning from it. I collect old letters, postcards, photo albums, yearbooks, and these are my source material and inspiration. My reference material is central to the meaning in my work. I seek to isolate and highlight the things that make the image intriguing to me, whether those details are actually a part of the image or part of my imagination.