Kimberly Witham « Muybridge's Horse

Kimberly Witham

I feel like I see exciting new work from Kimberly Witham every new months. I first posted her series Transcendence in 2011, followed by Domestic Arrangements in 2013. Since then, Witham has completed not only wunderkammer, which was in progress at the time of my last post, but also On Ripeness and Rot, a body of gorgeous, dark images inspired by Dutch still life painting. As well as prolific, Witham is experimental, using rich black, elaborate patterns, and stark white as backgrounds in her various projects, and transitioning from featuring bright pastel colors in her last two series to the subdued and earthy tones of her most recent one. Consistently, Witham is concerned with animal death, in a way “resurrecting” roadkill in her pictures. In her images, Witham practices an obvious control, respect, and knowledge of her materials, including the animal bodies she has collected. Their placement is at times peaceful and at others challenging, reflecting this complex quality of death itself.

From the artist’s statement: These photographs are a very personal meditation on beauty, fecundity, fragility and the inevitable march of time. The visual language of these images is borrowed from classical Dutch still life painting. In these paintings flowers, fruit and flesh are represented in varying states of ripeness and decay. These paintings serve as both a celebration of beauty and a reminder of the inevitability of death. They are simultaneously seductive and grotesque. The materials used in my images are all culled from my surroundings. The flowers and vegetables are from my garden. The animals and birds are all road kill found close to my New Jersey home. The ephemeral nature of my subject matter requires me to work only with what is available on any given day.