Lydia Kinney is a painter based in Greenfield, Massachusetts. She graduated from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2014 with a BFA in Painting, and was the recipient of department honors and the 2013 Rob Moore award. Lydia shows regionally throughout New England, often in the Pioneer Valley.
Q&A
What are your earliest memories of being artistic? I remember painting in my mom’s kitchen when I was three or four, throughout my childhood and into adolescence.
Are you self-taught or formally educated in visual art? I’m formally educated with a BFA in painting from Massart.
How did you first become involved with CAA? I’d been showing occasionally with the CAA since the Emerging Artist’s exhibition in 2019, and joined this past summer. I wish I had done it sooner– I’m still blown away by the outreach of the association, the consistent quality of exhibition, and the impact it has on the community.
What medium do you currently work in and how did you choose this medium? I currently work in acrylic paint on wood panel. I find the surface is receptive to mark making and development that gets lost on canvas. Stains and smears retain their shape and smooth texture, and I can lean into more reductive practices like sanding and scraping paint without harm to the substrate.
Door, Acrylic on Panel
What is your creative process? Where are you finding ideas for your art these days? My process is often to start a new work from a favorite or most challenging component of a previous painting. It’s liberating, having permission from myself to start the same painting one, two, six times over, knowing that the process will take over the journey, and I will end up somewhere new.
How do you choose your subject matter? Is there a reoccurring theme that carries throughout your work?Because of the recurrence in my process, my themes do stick to a small handful of ideas as they’re represented: the occupation of space, contradictions of surface and color, or visual confrontations of dissonance.
Do you have any shows coming up? My work will be in (re)figuring abstraction at Katzman Contemporary from January 7th to March 18th, alongside Richard Keen and Forrest Knight! I’m really looking forward to seeing the work up together. Details at www.katzmancontemporaryprojects.com
See more from Lydia Kinney
Website: www.lydiamkinney.com
Instagram: @l.m.kinney
Facebook: www.facebook.com/lydiamkinney