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Kimberly Witham: The Accidental Naturalist

March 20, 2020 – May 31, 2020

This exhibition includes images from several bodies of work.  They 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 fleeting nature of my subject matter requires me to work only with what is available on any given day.

Featured image: Ruby Throated Hummingbird & Praying Mantis (Archilochus colubris & Mantis religiosa ), 2018

After Harnett
Flight, 2019
Jawbreaker, 2017
Confession, 2016
Overripe, 2018

Kimberly Witham was born and raised in Wakefield, Rhode Island. She studied art history at Duke University and photography at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth. Her photographs are strongly influenced by her studies in art history and her interest in the natural world.