Kimberly Brooks () is an American artist and author. Her work blends figuration and abstraction with a focus on subjects related to memory, reality, history, representation, and identity.

Early life and education

Born in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

as Kimberly Shlain, she is the daughter of Leonard Shlain and Carol (nee)Lewis. She grew up in Mill Valley, California. There she studied sculpture, drawing, and painting as a child. She attended

UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant uni ...

and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in literature. Following her graduation, she spent a year in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

and attended the

Sorbonne Sorbonne may refer to: * Sorbonne (building), historic building in Paris, which housed the University of Paris and is now shared among multiple universities. *the University of Paris (c. 1150 – 1970) *one of its components or linked institution, ...

. She later studied painting at

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California ...

and

Otis College of Art and Design Otis College of Art and Design is a private art and design school in Los Angeles, California. Established in 1918, it was the city's first independent professional school of art. The main campus is located in the former IBM Aerospace headquarte ...

Work

Painting and multimedia

Brooks' first solo exhibition, ''The Whole Story,'' was held at the Risk Press Gallery in

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in 2006. It featured a series of segmented paintings which investigated the role of women as artists and models. Brooks used erotic imagery and fragmentation to examine the historical glorification of women's bodies to present the female image within a feminist representation. Brooks' second solo show, ''Mom's Friends,'' explored feminism of the early 1960s and 1970s. The paintings were based on her mother and her friends in Marin County, California. In addition to original photographs, Brooks shot recreations, using friends and models in vintage clothing. In 2008, Brooks' exhibited ''Technicolor Summer''. She began work on ''Technicolor Summer'' after her father was diagnosed with a terminal illness, and wrote on the subject "every moment was more vivid because it could be the last one. It was a summer in high definition. A summer in technicolor." These paintings aimed to convey qualities of old photographs. After attending a talk at

LACMA The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Page Museum). LACMA was founded in 196 ...

about Elsa Schiaparelli's and

Coco Chanel Gabrielle Bonheur "Coco" Chanel ( , ; 19 August 1883 – 10 January 1971) was a French fashion designer and businesswoman. The founder and namesake of the Chanel brand, she was credited in the post-World War I era with popularizing a sporty, c ...

's influence on the paintings of

Henri Matisse Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French visual artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a drawing, draughtsman, printmaking, printmaker, and sculptur ...

, Brooks began a project creating portraits of well-known costume and fashion designers, and stylists, titled ''The Style Project.'' This looked at ideas of personal style and trends in popular fashion, using photos of her subjects in their own environments as reference to the paintings. Themes around female beauty and fashion continue with ''Thread'' in 2011, and in 2014, she had two solo shows; ''I See People Disappear'' and ''I Have A King Who Does Not Speak''. In 2015, Brooks' 8-foot-tall uncoated steel pendant, "The Ephemerality of Manner," was permanently acquired by the Cooper Building in Los Angeles' Fashion District. Using video, collage work, textile pieces, and welded steel, it was created as part of her site-specific installation "Thread and Bone." The ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the U ...

'' wrote that the sculpture was "shot through with subtle complexities and contradictions traversing fashion, feminism, architecture and art history." In September 2017, the Zevitas Marcus Gallery in Los Angeles presented ''Brazen,'' a solo exhibition of paintings Brooks began working on after the 2016 American presidential election. Brooks used silver and gold leaf to create paintings that incorporate religious icons, grand interiors and ornamentation.

Teaching, writing, speaking

Between 2007 and 2009, Brooks interviewed artists and contributed more than 70 essays about art for ''First Person Artist,'' her weekly column in ''The Huffington Post.'' She founded the ''Huffington Post'' Arts section in 2010 and its Science section in 2011. In 2011, she presented "The Creative Process in Eight Stages" at a TEDx conference.

Personal life

Brooks lives in Los Angeles, and works out of a studio in Venice, California. She and her husband, Albert Brooks married in 1997. Together they have two children. Following her father's death, Brooks and her siblings, Tiffany Shlain and Jordan Shlain, worked together to edit the manuscript of his final book, ''Leonardo's Brain: Understanding Da Vinci's Creative Genius.''

Solo exhibitions, publications and installations

* 2018 ''Brazen: A Painting and Poetry Collection'', Edited by Keith Martin. Poets Brandon Constantine, Richard Ferguson, Luivette Resto and Marie Marandola contribute poems inspired by paintings of Kimberly Brooks. Published by Griffith Moon. * 2018 ''Mid Career Survey'', Mt San Antonio College, Walnut, CA * 2015 ''Thread and Bone'', the Cooper Building, Los Angeles, California * 2014 ''I Have A King Who Does Not Speak'' Roosevelt Library, San Antonio, Texas

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Brooks, Kimberly Year of birth missing (living people) American women painters Living people Otis College of Art and Design alumni People from Mill Valley, California UC Berkeley College of Letters and Science alumni University of California, Los Angeles alumni Painters from New York City 21st-century American women artists 21st-century American painters