STATEMENT Working initially as a figurative painter, Kim Manfredi has spent the past few years developing a new and more intuitive form of expression. The style that she has evolved defies conventional categories. It employs so many modes of painting that it cannot be reduced to any one. For example, she uses gesture, throwing her whole body into the making of larger-than-life marks, yet the work looks nothing like typical “gestural abstracts” that are made up of a constellation of brush strokes. She uses spray-paint and stencils, but avoids figurative motifs. She plays with surface pattern, but is not making pattern-painting. She is inspired by the landscape—especially the desert views that whizz past her on her daily bicycle rides—yet literal references to mountains or horizons in her work remain few and far between. Manfredi’s works are not depictions of anything, nonetheless they do evoke an illusion of forms in space, creating a magical world unto itself that viewers are invited to enter and explore. Kim works in an intuitive and improvisational way, without a plan, allowing the first marks to speak back to her about what needs to happen next. Yet we see her developing cohesive series, which hold together as a body of work, as the artist makes a sustained investigation into a particular color palette and set of compositional motifs. The work currently at SLATE was made primarily in the spring, summer, and early fall of 2022 and is characterized by a predominantly neutral palette with many gray and sand tones, punctuated by moments of bright pinks, yellows, and reds. Her compositions are balanced, running off the edges of the frame, but also acknowledging the important role that the edge plays in holding and defining an artwork on a wall. To Manfredi, this body of work is about risk-taking and moving beyond the artists’ own imagination. In her own words, “The painting comes into being when the materials and the picture provide an experience of seeing that is just beyond my knowing”. ABOUT Kim Manfredi graduated from Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) with a BFA in 1988 and then worked as a skilled decorative painter and yoga entrepreneur for many years. She later returned to MICA to study with Grace Hartigan and Joyce Kozoloff, graduating with an MFA in Fine Art in 2009. She was represented by C. Grimaldis Gallery, 2009 – 2013 and attended residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, VCCA, and Maryland Art Place. She relocated to the Palm Springs area in 2016 where she has exhibited at various venues including the Intersect art fair and Palm Springs Art Museum. She is also a founder of the Desert Open Studios Tour.