Artist Spotlight: Joanna Kidney
Artist Joanna Kidney in her studio.
R&F Artist Instructor Joanna Kidney was born in Dublin and is based in County Wicklow, Ireland. Her practice considers the immensity and the mystery of being human. It is a web of interrelated ideas around consciousness, perception, temporality and holism. Through drawing, painting and installation, her work offers open, poetic prompts and a contemplative space.
In addition to exhibitions in New York, Germany, New Mexico, and Virginia, Joanna has had a number of solo exhibitions throughout Ireland. She is the recipient of a Cooper Foundation Grant; funding from the Arts Council of Ireland and Wicklow County Council; and an RHA Studio Award, among others. International residencies include time in Kiðjaberg, Iceland and Brigham Young University, Utah.
Joanna’s work is in many collections including Allied Irish Banks; The Ballinglen Museum of Art; The Central Bank of Ireland; Department of the Environment, Northern Ireland; Fleschmann Hilliard PR; Lee Hotels; and O’Connor Sutton Cronin Engineering, as well as private collections in Ireland, USA, UK, Spain, France, Switzerland.
Can you tell us a little about yourself?
I grew up and studied in Dublin. After college, I took off with my backpack seeking broader horizons, travelling and working in Australia, South East Asia, and India for 18 months. Whilst this was a truly formative time, I chose to return to this island called home to begin my life as an artist and have been based here since. Now, twenty five years on, I live on the East Coast with my family an hour south of Dublin, by the sea and mountains, and work from a studio in our back garden.
Buíochas 5, 2023, encaustic on panel, 15x15cm.
How did you get your start as an artist?
My uncle was an artist and filmmaker. I idolised him. He died when I was 10. I poured over his notebooks, which contained colourful abstract drawings, growing up. I studied Visual Communications (graphic design, illustration, photography, print) in college, finishing up knowing I wanted to be an artist and not a designer. For the following decade, my bread and butter was part time illustration alongside making my own work. Then, as I had anticipated, I arrived at a point where I needed to commit fully to my own work and stop doing the commercial work. I began teaching around that time.
Being part of a number of different artists studios over the years has been very important. From the start, I exhibited regularly in solo and group shows in Ireland and abroad in France, Germany, the UK, and the United States. A couple of significant exhibition opportunities came about through residencies.
Buíochas 2, 2023, encaustic on panel, 15x15cm.
What are you currently working on in the studio?
The work is in a glorious grapple at the moment! I’m working through a series of encaustic paintings that seek openness, painterliness and an energetic charge. The immediacy and purity of a series of tangential watercolour drawings is helpful as I grapple with the paintings. I’m also working on an ongoing funded research project about the mark, the line, and the work’s concerns.
How has your work evolved over the years?
My work has always been non-representational, derived from a language of marks, lines, and shapes. It arises from a belief that we are part of something much bigger than ourselves; it is a reflection on impermanance and the interconnectedness of living matter. Drawing formally and/or conceptually is central. Materiality has also always been important - the possibilities of a medium or a material, how they interact, the act of making, working with the hands and the sense of touch.
Around 2010, I became fascinated by the possibilities of drawing and began to work 3 dimensionally for the first time. The work went through a transformation - expanding in thinking, scale, surfaces, materials, and processes. Since then, my work has moved between 2 and 3 dimensional worlds, exploring drawings’ boundaries with painting, sculpture, installation, and movement.
Metamurmuration, 2015-2018, felt and monofilament, dimensions variable.
Tell us a little bit about your 2024 workshop at Ballinglen. What is the workshop focused on? What can students expect to leave with?
I love giving this this course annually at Ballinglen. The 9 days allows deep exploration, immersion in nature, the senses, and group sharing. There will be a focus on building paintings with optical depth and luminosity through layering, translucency, opacity, and subtraction. The days are full with experimental exercises and prompts lead to a more playful and intuitive use of techniques and tools for adding/subtracting/manipulating layers.
Colour exploration, composition, and resolving a painting will be emphasized. Students can expect to leave support, field trips, demos and presentations, plentiful painting time, and with a deepened relationship with paint, as well as an expansion of your visual vocabulary and your approach to abstraction. Also, invigorated by new friends and the light and stories of this special place.
For anyone interested but not able to attend this in person workshop in Ireland, I’m looking forward to starting another 5 week intensive online course with C2C Art on 6th November. Titled “Encaustic and Abstraction,” this course will be jam packed, covering similar content in the ease of your own studio.
The miniscule and the immense, 2022, encaustic on panel, 100x100cm.
What is your typical studio day like?
I tend to keep quite regular daytime hours (years of being an artist mother), blocking off a chunk of the day for concentrated painting/making without distraction, phone on silent, and music on. I bookend the admin/other project work at start or end of this. Swimming in the sea with sunrise is my ultimate best start to a day!
What keeps you motivated in the studio?
Being unmotivated is rarely an issue actually. The work is always calling (and always the juggling act of balancing creating/survival/being a parent). Keeping curious and looking outward is important sustenance. For me this includes reading, listening, writing, conversations with artist friends. Swimming and spending time with the natural world resource me.
Recent paintings, studio wall, 2023.
What’s next on your horizon?
Two long running projects culminated recently enough, so right now I’m enjoying an incubation period making new paintings and drawings. Soon I will return to a 3D linear sculptural project using armatures and encaustic paint that I received funding to develop.
Over the next month, I’m presenting and teaching at the Celtic Convergence retreat (delighted to have this happening at Mulranny Arts in Ireland) and starting the C2C online course, so I’m preparing for them also.
Digging Deeper workshop at the Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, 2023.
Anything else you’d like our readers to know?
If you’d like to join my mailing list to keep updated on my classes, feel free to send me your email. You can reach me at joanna@joannakidney.com.
To see more of Joanna’s work, visit her website joannakidney.com. You can follow her in Instagram @joanna_kidney. Classes and workshops are listed here.
UPCOMING WORKSHOPS:
November 6 - December 4, 2023: 5 Week Online Course: Encaustic and Abstraction with C2C Art
Class meets November 6, 13, 20, 27, and December 4
c2c-art.com/p/encaustic-and-abstraction
April 5 - 13, 2024: Encaustic and Abstraction: 9 Day Retreat Course
Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Co. Mayo