My work is expressed through lines, which are a means of expressing my freedom. Sometimes curved, other times straight, the line represents something that exists not just in one field but throughout infinite experience. The deep spatial effect created by various layers urges the viewer’s senses to transcend the two-dimensional world of painting. Colorful lines meet one another freely and create unexpected forms. When working, I follow the flow of my unconscious mind. The harmony of opposites - real and relative, free flowing and driven by rules - is what my paintings express.
Above all, I try to be true of myself while I work on each painting. I believe directness of acting and being is the way to one’s true nature. This nature is not something we make or create for the purpose of achievement; it is already there. Zen teaches that we spend years forgetting and abandoning this nature, but that we can always access it again. Living in New York, I am constantly exposed to the struggle and suffering of those less fortunate. Rather than analyzing their situation, or calculating the best ways to offer help, I choose to rely on the instinct of compassion that rises to the forefront of my consciousness. This is a simple truth: when I see a person who needs help, I help. Once realized, this clear approach translates effortlessly to everything I do – not least of which to my artistic practice. On a blank canvas, I start by applying a coat of primary color, then composing one line after another, repeatedly, answering the call of intuition. I do not dare try to explain the reason for each brush stroke; what I create flows directly from embracing the experience of making art. Lines that connect to each other are free, but also entangled, finally composing a work of striking unity. I try to return constantly to the true nature of my work, rather than settling for mere suggestions or ideas. Furthermore, I imagine new possibilities when each line is made, suggesting an expansion outward. It is impossible to calculate each line’s trajectory, the laws that define its existence on the canvas – but this state of ‘not knowing’ is what opens the door to an endless world of possibilities.
I consider the contents of each painting to reflect a captured moment, the record of a genuine experience, and hope my works provide viewers with a window to the truth of their own being. These paintings have the potential to encourage a departure from the realm of the expected, and an experience that is defined by only its own essence.
On the Artist's Work:
Lacey Kim is an artist who is unafraid. Her work challenges the viewer to reconcile that which we see with that which we feel. Her free-flowing process, punctuated with moments of diligent detail, is itself a statement on what we conceive as ‘art’. By embracing and exploring the relationship between space and form, Kim achieves a startling resonance; we are confronted with the freely occurring - nature’s totality of forces. Her lines act both to define fields of coexistence and to provide a fleeting structure to that which knows no shape. Color patterns - and their breaking - articulate an understanding which is at once beyond us and shared by us all. Kim’s paintings require a departure from the expected, the contrived, the sensible; we must transcend fields of gesture and flow, and address at once the tension between order and entropy - what is known and what can only barely, momentarily, be grasped.
-C. Colon-Berezin