Image credit: Adele Watts
Kim Booker (b. 1983) lives and works in Margate. She graduated with a BFA from City and Guilds of London Art School in 2019 and has since exhibited widely in the UK and abroad, including Paris, Barcelona, and South Korea. Most recently, she has relocated to the TKE Studios in Margate.
Working in acrylic on large canvases, Booker uses colour, gesture and figure to express the psychology of the female experience. Her semi-autobiographical paintings often feature figures in poses that are suggestive of different emotional states, created intuitively through a combination of gestural abstraction and layers of drawn imagery. Elements are scrubbed out, obscured, and over painted, with dynamic strokes and scrawls of colour.
Rooted in the tradition of modern painting, Booker’s work shows the influence of German Expressionism, idiosyncratic British painting, and American abstract expressionism - combined with a contemporary perspective on identity and relationships.
Recent solo exhibitions include; 'no-man's-land' at JARILAGER Gallery in Cologne (2023); 'I Want to Live Twice' at Bo Lee and Workman in Somerset (2023); 'June is the Saddest Month' at Annka Kultys Gallery in London (2022). Recent group exhibitions include; 'Body Language' at Berntson Bhattacharjee in London (2023); 'Weeds Won't Wither' at JARILAGER Gallery in Cologne (2022); 'Taking a Broom to the Wasps Nest' at Pictorum Gallery in London (2022); 'Road to Somewhere' at The Room London Gallery in London (2022); 'Kiaf Seoul' at Jari Lager Gallery in South Korea (2022); 'Voices for Love' at Prior Art Space in Barcelona (2022). Booker is a studio holder at TKE Studios in Margate.