Kyle KM is a Queer artist based in Richmond, Naarm and has been working with oil colours for over 10 years.
Brunswick Street Gallery, with the support of Yarra City Council, is excited to exhibit Kyle KM’s Gods & Not in our Ground Floor Gallery Project — a dedicated exhibition space to showcase the work of emerging artists based across Australia.
‘My passion and expression has been developed by working from life in portraiture, still life, and figurative expressions while taking reference from historical emotion in art to reinterpret the world at current in an otherworldly-yet historic mythology. Each painting is a purposeful exploration of colour and light.’
What medium(s) do you work with, and why have you chosen them?
I work with oil colour, pure pigment suspended in oil, because I fell in love with the richness in colour, texture, and the history that the art medium holds. After exploring digital art in my teens as the internet and technology was just beginning to boom I found myself constantly struggling with keeping up with technology while needing the most recent tools available, updating software and computers as they became too slow to function. Eventually I found love in the analogue world of colour, where I was limited only to my own two hands and my knowledge.
Can you elaborate a little more on your making process – how does your artwork get from initial concept to exhibition stage?
The lockdowns really had me and my partner in a flow of journaling and creativity. We slowly built and explored what our mythological Queer world would be. These works for God’s & Not are an exploration of my portraiture into this mythological world. These works are developed with the sitter in person. Each image takes hours of adjustments and redesigning the concepts. The flow would find itself as the sitter would find themselves in the image I’d begin the painting.
How do you stay prolific? Do you have any particular methods to push past a creative block?
Since these pieces I’ve been making bad art. Trying to get it out of my system and holding no expectations or much thought on doing anything with these pieces. Sitting in the discipline is always going to be better than waiting for inspiration to come for me.
Can you tell us a little more about your creative working environment/studio?
I love to be on my own. Uninterrupted by anything other than my own whims & creative needs. I find it allows for me to fall into flow state and the rhythm of my practice.
Who would your dream collaboration be with, and why?
I would love to work with Troy Sivan. Together I think we’d come up with such a fun concept together for a new artwork.
Do you have any particular paints/materials/tools that you’re really enjoying using at the moment?
I’ve been falling in love with rough bristled brushes as the texture left by scraping back the paint and brushing down glazes with translucent colours is so fun to explore.
What upcoming projects are you working on?
Taking Up Space as a massive 3 day event coming up late April at Meat Market exploring loves letters to your Queer body in all capacities. It is filled with over 35 Victorian creatives speaking and performing, plus the love letters and artworks for you to experience at your pace. I will be live painting 3 sitters from life over each of the three nights. Definitely something that a lot of people are looking out for with tickets already being sold through Eventbrite.
How does your personal history influence your work?
My experiences visiting museums and galleries all over the world along with mentorships in Los Angeles from a couple of my favourite contemporary masters have definitely influenced my techniques and style. Their inspiration to look towards the old masters to learn everything imaginable.
What is your favourite colour? Any reason why?
Everything thinks it’s red but it is actually orange... That blood orange colour that is bursting with heat and exploding into your retinas... Almost red kinda orange.
Kyle KM’s Gods & Not is being exhibited in Brunswick Street Gallery’s Ground Floor Gallery Project, an initiative generously supported by the City of Yarra.
Gods & Not is current until 6 March 2022.