Kim Chigi is an abstract painter based in Petaluma, CA.  She received her Bachelor of Arts from Rutgers University and continued her studies in painting at the Aegean Center for Fine Art
in Greece and Italy. Kim’s paintings have won awards, been exhibited nationally and internationally, featured on album covers, juried into art exhibitions, and published in magazines.

Inspired by the uncertainty and fluidity of life, Kim prefers to work intuitively and let the brush, paint and ever changing composition guide her.  Always seeking that moment of repose or liminal space where she can pause complementing her place in the work, impermanence, openness, and indeterminacy provide her with periods of transition as she works during which normal limits of thought, self-understanding, and behavior are relaxed, clearing a trajectory for something new.

ARTIST STATEMENT

As an artist, my work is a reflection of the complex and often contradictory emotions that arise from the experience of travel. I am drawn to the liminal space between departure and arrival—the quiet moments when you are alone in an unfamiliar place, suspended between the weight of isolation and the exhilaration of freedom. My paintings capture that tension: the stark, solitary beauty of landscapes that feel both vast and empty, and the fleeting sense of liberation that comes with moving through space without attachment.

Through color, texture, and form, I aim to evoke the internal landscapes of being in transit—those moments when you’re disconnected from everything familiar, yet paradoxically more connected to yourself. The freedom of travel often feels intertwined with a deep loneliness, as if the act of journeying is both an escape and a confrontation with the self. My work seeks to hold that duality, giving visual expression to the quiet, reflective, and sometimes raw emotional experiences that accompany being on the move. Each painting is a meditation on the solitude and independence that shape our journeys, both external and internal.