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Biography

Growing up in northern Vermont, Kimberlee Forney enjoyed creating art at an early age. She finds her inspiration among the beautiful Vermont landscape, within music, animals, people, her daily surroundings, and within her brother, Larkin Forney, whom received a TBI (traumatic brain injury) in 1986 at the age of eight. She appreciates the healing qualities of art and it’s communicative and emotive powers. She is grateful to be able to express her feelings and ideas through her creations. Early in her art life, she concentrated on realistically representing the world around her.
She developed her artistic and technical skills while attending Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania. While there she studied various artistic mediums, including printmaking, lithography, sculpture, drawing and painting. The study of psychology and the German language and culture further inspired her and influenced her artistic interests and development. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Studio Art in 2000.
After graduation, Kimberlee’s fantastical style developed out of a basic idea involving a lively and musical bar scenario with human-like forms embedded in the scene (titled “Jazzy at the Bar”). Her business, Natural Expressions, was formed and other pieces involving various cultural scenes, animal forms, and landscapes soon followed. Her favorite subjects to explore relate to the beauty and spirituality present in the natural world and in the cultural world surrounding us.
The medium she uses to create her images is acrylic paint. In her paintings, she portrays the connectedness of everything by the use of black lines. She positions her lines, and figures in an aesthetically-pleasing manner that is appropriate to the mood and
energy which she wishes to convey. Texture and color are used in her creations to not only convey mood but to also represent the surrounding energy. She reproduces her paintings in the form of limited-edition giclee prints at North Seven Studios in Brandon,
Vermont. As with acrylic paintings, giclee prints should be properly cared for and displayed in a low-moisture environment and exposure to direct sunlight should be avoided.
Kimberlee is a member or displays at the Brandon Artists’ Guild in Brandon, the Helen Day Art Center in Stowe, Art on Main in Bristol, The Northern Vermont Artist’s Association (NVAA), Kennedy Bros. in Vergennes, the Chaffee Art Center in Rutland and the Artisan’s Gallery in Waitsfield.. She also displays art on the PBS online art’s gallery. When the weather is right, she enjoys to paint and display her artwork in the artist’s alley on Church Street in Burlington.
Currently, Kimberlee has over 200 images in her style and over 50 in print. She also accepts a limited number of commissioned pieces every year.
For Kimberlee, being an artist is more than just about creating art. It is also about using her artwork to help benefit the lives of others. We create our society and our experiences as individuals and as a larger whole. Kimberlee spends a portion of her time promoting awareness about the “silent epidemic” of TBI (traumatic brain injury) and child abuse in our society. Every year, another 2 million persons in America sustain a brain injury and little assistance is available. (For more information on her brother’s and her family’s struggle and ordeal following his injury in 1986, visit HYPERLINK "http://www.tbijustice.com" www.tbijustice.com.) Kimberlee is also concerned about the epidemic of child abuse and the lack of action that is being taken by social systems to end this abuse and protect the children. Feel free to contact Kimberlee regarding her artwork, brain injury, or child abuse via phone, mail or email.

ART RESUME OF KIMBERLEE FORNEY

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EDUCATION
Allegheny College Meadville, PA May 2000
Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art: Psychology Minor, German Minor

HONORS
Special Merit Award: Seventh Annual Juried Intercollegiate Art Show at California University of Pennsylvania—five color lino cut print “Mother and Child” March 1999
Spring Honors Convocation Prize for Art Major—outstanding achievement in major, high GPA, chosen by faculty April 1999

TEACHING
Substitute teach art/music (K-3) Essex Jct., VT Spring 2005
Young Rembrandt’s
After-school Drawing Program
South Hero, VT Fall 2005-present

MISCELLANEOUS
Drawing for the French Creek Project website February 2003
http://frenchcreek.alleg.edu/newsletter5.html
Mountain Lake PBS Televised Arts Auction
Acrylic paintings
“Relaxing by the Barn” February 2003
“Swaying Trees” February 2004
“Rolling River” February 2005
“Pigs at Twilight” February 2007 ________________________________________________________________________
ORGANIZATIONS
Helen Day Art Center Stowe, VT
Chaffee Art Center Rutland , VT
Brandon Artist’s Guild Brandon , VT
Northern VT Artist’s Association (NVAA) Northern Vermont
Art on Main Bristol, VT
Art on Line Art Gallery PBS Plattsburgh, NY

Reviews

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“WHAT COMES NATURALLY--It’s not a live band, but at least it’s a lively one: The trio somewhat resembles the classic 1970s band YES in “Present Stage”—one of the “fantastical acrylic paintings” by Kimberlee Forney. Musicians often appear in Forney’s work, but former YES leader Rick Wakeman is more likely to be seen playing Vegas these days.”

Mark Awodey
Seven Days
August 2003

“What tubelike forms are to Taplin, mono-colored and stylized images of the body are for Essex Junction’s Kimberlee Forney. She says building up scenes around “basic stick figures with little or no features” popped into her head in 2000, and she’s been exploring that motif and similar animal figures ever since. One of her larger pieces features four musicians and a singer entertaining about 50 ruddy, pinkish and purple dancers. It’s hard to count them because the dancers are so enmeshed.”

Ed Barna
Rutland Daily Herald
February 20, 2004

“Another major focus was the Chaffee Art Center’s holiday show, featuring the delightful work of Essex Junction artist Kimberlee Forney. Walking into her gallery, I laughed out loud at the sheer joy of her vivacious vision.
Forney paints fantastical landscapes with rolling, pillow-like hills, Q-tip trees and star-filled skies. Her world is populated by featureless pink humanoid beings that resemble inflated bubble gum. Some are musical, reclining under a tree playing a guitar. They share the landscape with splay-legged cows and cotton-ball sheep that lounge on the beanbag hills or gambol along the ridges, ogling viewers and enjoying the magical world that the artist has created for them.”

Richard L. Brown
Vermont Sunday Magazine
December 3, 2006

“PASTRY WITH THAT?—Eighteen paintings and giclee reproductions by Essex Junction artist Kimberlee Forney brighten the walls of Mirabelle’s in Burlington, as the café’s first art show of 2007. Forney has to be one of the hardest working painters in northern Vermont; her uniquely inspired brand of figurative abstraction has appeared in about a dozen venues over the past year.”

Marc Awodey
Seven Days
January 10-17, 2007

ONE-WOMAN SHOWS

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