If It's Hip, It's Here (Archives): kimberly applegate

Above: two of Kimberly's more recent works

Artist Kimberly Applegate has finally found her niche. A painter I discovered on DailyPainters.com, she has cultivated a style and subject that are selling like hotcakes... or like knoll furniture in a clearance sale.

Admittedly I wasn't a huge fan of her daily painting work initially. I didn't include her in my post about chair painters because I felt her work was a little naive, and inconsistent. But over the past few months, she has begun pairing modern chairs with contemporary artwork and has found an audience that can't get enough of it. In doing so, her work is more consistent and mature, her compositions have improved and her technical skill is clearly better than one year ago.

Above: Daily painting "Saarinen's Tulip Chair with Hockney's Tulips"

While some are obviously superior paintings to others, they are all so likable and inviting that the bidding wars over each 6" square painting on ebay are increasing weekly.

Incredibly prolific (she churns one out every day) she has yet to repeat herself and the paintings just seem to be getting better and better.

Capitalizing on two trends of the moment, modern art and modern furniture, she pairs chairs from the likes of every respected designer from Saarinen to Wegner, Bertoia to Eames- even Philippe Starck, with artwork that compliments the chair by the likes of Rothko, Hockney, Indiana, Franz Kline, Warhol and so many others.

Above: Daily painting "The Butterfly effect"

Some are clever pairings, like the Butterfly chair with Donald Sultan's Butterfly silkscreen, and others have design elements that echo one another like that of the Matisse painting of Dancing Muses with their arms linked creating a circle and the Cherner Chair whose arms arc in a similar fashion.

Above: Daily painting "May I Have This Dance? (matisse and cherner chair)"

For you non gallery goers and newbie art buyers, the red dots mean they are already sold. If you want one you have to be quick and willing to pay at least $300.00+ . Believe me, I know, I wanted the Barbara Barry Chair painting (below) and lost out on ebay.

Above: Daily painting "Infinity (Barbara Barry Chair and Richard Serra etchings)"

Take a look at more of these great little daily paintings:

And that's only one small facet of this woman's creativity. Her own bio on her bird painting blog (yep, she paints birds too) is very cute:

I earned my BFA from the Art Academy of Cincinnati in 1999 and participated in the New York Studio Program through Parsons. I've schlepped a backpacker's easel across Europe trying to connect to my "painter ancestors"--they weren't kidding about the light in south of France. And if I ever win an Oscar for painting I will thank Vermeer, Kahlo, Hopper, Richter and Barney, to name just a few.

She's incredibly multi-talented, with numerous websites of her own. A painting website (on which you can really see a difference between her recent work and not so recent work), and an ebay store, 2 blogs and two online stores.

Live A Plush Life, whose site design is both inviting and inspiring and features notecards of hers as well as other pretty handmade items and a print shop of her chair paintings.