Get To Know Artist & Designer Kim Parker

Recently, we featured the products of artist and designer Kim Parker here. We were able to do an interview and I just couldn’t wait to share it with you all! We hope you enjoy reading about her life and inspirations, as well as pictures from her very own brownstone apartment in New York. Please, be sure to leave a comment to let Kim know what an inspiration she is and how much we enjoy her work.

Tell us a little about yourself.

I feel very fortunate to have three mediums of creative expression to draw from my life. I love to write. I spend hours every day recording my impressions about life in my journal. Writing is a form of meditation and is very similar to the act of painting for me- except that a writer’s palette feels greater somehow- the spectrum of color is even more brilliant to draw from. Painting and writing are both forms of story telling for me. I love to paint gardens because I enjoy the freedom that comes with improvisation. I feel the same way when I pick up my flute and play along to Brazilian jazz. Within the framework of a canvas or textile design, I enjoy re-creating a kind of social interaction or dialogue between the flowers and leaves. The garden is just a metaphor for a community. My flowers touch and bend, face away and turn towards each other, and somehow interact in a harmonious, organic manner that I hope reflect my inner joy through their rich color and energy.

Did you always know that you wanted to do this as a career?

I think, in answer to your question, yes. I always knew in my heart that I wanted to paint textiles for a living, but sometimes the thing you are searching for in life is right there in front of you, and yet, you spend years dancing around it. As a child, all of the evidence was really right there from an early age. I spent hours drawing flowers and patterns in vivid colors. I came from a family of serious classical musicians. By the time I was eight years old I was already preparing for a career as a classical flutist, but between concerts and competitions, I was always painting.

I don’t regret the years I pursued a musical career at all, because I feel that the rich repertoire I studied and performed for so long - worked it’s way into the architecture of my designs. I really feel that there is a “Divine order” to everything in life; a purpose and reason for all that we experience; a higher logic in the Universe that we need to trust. At the time I was giving concerts and enjoying the fruits of an early musical career, I wasn’t aware that I was laying the foundation for my career in design, but now I understand how important and essential it was.

Your home (featured in YOU magazine) is absolutely beautiful and full of unique and warm pieces. To you, what is the most important aspect of the home?

A home for me is a sanctuary. It’s a place that embraces and welcomes you the moment you step inside. People who visit our home are always amazed I think when they see all the rich color and pattern we live amid – and sometimes stand there smiling as if entering a kind of secret garden. A home is of course another canvas for self -expression. It’s a place to leap with your heart aesthetically, to create a dialogue between objects with cherished pieces. Even some of the stiffest corporate heads we have entertained in our home have expressed joyful astonishment when they enter and discover all of the flowers we have growing on my rugs, pillows, dinnerware and canvases, which always makes me chuckle.

What inspires you?

Life. I am inspired by kindness and beauty. City life challenges you to find beauty, especially in nature, and when you do, it can really touch your heart.

Last summer, I was coming down my front stoop and there was an injured baby sparrow on the ground that had apparently fallen from the branch above. I gently picked it up and brought it into our apt, made it a little nest inside a shoebox and fed it some jam and seed to give it energy. For days it perched and chirped upon my index finger as I bobbed it up and down, trying to mimic flight. My husband and I named him Charlie Bird. Each day we put Charlie outside on an urn beside our front stoop near the tree branch where it’s fellow sparrows lived. At night, we took Charlie inside to protect him from potential predators. After a week of perching on the urn, and gentle flying lessons on my finger, Charlie finally mustered the courage to take flight. His road to strength and freedom was beautiful for us to witness. In an urban setting, this type of encounter is extremely precious, rare, and meaningful. This intimate episode softened the cityscape for us temporarily, and I am certain that I took that inspiration and tenderness to my work.

Do you have a favorite piece that you have created? Why is it your favorite?

I love my Bolero rug. Its jeweled tones are like opening a treasure chest every time you walk into the room. It’s just really rich and undeniably positive.

My painting Urban Garden is my favorite painting. Whenever I work on a canvas, I immerse myself in pigment for hours without coming up for air, the way some people garden! I am very spontaneous, and don’t like to return the next day to a painting to re-work it as I feel that my inner rhythms have changed. So when I work on a canvas I try to complete it that same day even if it sends me into a state of physical and emotional exhaustion. But with “Urban Garden” I changed my own rules. I re-worked it for weeks. It challenged me in a new way. It kept calling me back, asking me to be patient. In the end, its spacing and layers of color, which were not so easily arrived upon, I love. I never tire of its soft color palette of sunset pink, peach, gold and green. It is the centerpiece in our living room and is my favorite painting.

What is your favorite quote?

I guess Joseph Campbell’s “Follow Your Bliss.” I think that if we all listened more to our instincts and moved in the direction of our hearts, the world would be a better place.

How do you feel that being an artist has affected the way you view life?

I think I was very fortunate to have grown up in a family of both musicians and artists, surrounded by beautiful paintings and classical music. Beauty is of course subjective, but my eyes and heart are always in search of it. I believe that I have learned to find beauty in places and things that many might not deem so beautiful. I remember sitting in our parked car in a very grey and industrial part of Long Island City while my husband ran in to our storage unit, and quietly asked myself, “what is beautiful about this place?” For a few moments I imagined being in Hawaii instead, with lush green palms and the sound of crickets to try and transport myself momentarily – and then, I realized that the power to transform anything was within me. And I soon found I had affection for the dilapidated brick building in front of me, set against a tall barbed wire fence. I think this is how living the life of an artist has affected me. I believe I can find beauty anywhere.

If you could offer one thing to encourage or inspire a young person wondering how to live a meaningful life, what would you like to say?

The first thing that comes to mind is “believe in what you love doing and nurture it passionately.” Someone once said to me in my mid twenties when I was considering the idea of pursuing a career in textile design, “Kim, if you want to live in New York City, you’d better get yourself a secretarial job! You can’t paint pretty pictures for a living and support yourself in this town!” I remember how those words affected and offended me. But in truth, they were quite perfect - because they actually fueled my desire all the more to follow my bliss!

Pictures courtesy of YOU Magazine, November 2007 & Elle Decoration UK, Sept 2005.