'Heartspace Hotel' is my surprise solo show for 2020 (I haven't told anyone about it until the last week couple of weeks, because I didn't know about it myself, lol!).

Occupying the third floor of The Gladstone Hotel in downtown Toronto, an amazing boutique art hotel renowned for its high profile art & design events and exhibitions, this multimedia show features a new combination of my heart-based work seen at my 'Heartspace' and 'A Full Heart' solo exhibitions in 2019, some of which have only ever been shown once, and even a couple of pieces I've never shown before.

Artworks include my longest digital print ever at over eight feet long, shown only once before in March 2019 at Cedar Ridge Creative Centre's Studio Gallery. 

Also: many more prints, three of my large scrolls with giant image transfers, fibre-based work, paintings, abstract photography, and two more digital prints I've only exhibited once before.

The opening reception coincides with the one for the second floor exhibition so it's sure to be a happening evening – hope you can make it!

Opening reception:
Friday Jan 31, 7-10pm
​Artist talk: 7:30pm

Kim-Lee Kho: Heartspace Hotel
at The Gladstone Hotel
1214 Queen Street West
Toronto ON M6J 1J6

Front Desk: 416.531.4635 x 0
Dinner Reservations: 416.531.4635 x 7130

It was a busy and fun weekend in Port Credit (Mississauga) on June 18 and 19 at Art-Spread where I was one of over a dozen artists/artisans showing and demonstrating what I do. 

Lots of people I know came to visit (only one had ever seen the scrolls live before), and if you were one of them, thank you.

Back in 2005/2006, when I was taking courses at Toronto School of Art, I had weekly portrait and figure painting sessions (both!). It was a great experience as I got to try so many ways of working with paint and with representation – all quite apart from the course content I have to say!

The discoveries I made then continue to influence me now.

The painting here is entitled 'What Remains' and was painted from life during one of these classes.

The canvas is 30" x 10", a pretty extreme proportion, one I took on as a challenge, to see how to compose for it successfully.

I started with a dark ground (base layer), which worked well with the strong directional lighting used for this pose. That made the shadows very dark, though (never one to be limited by mere reality!) I lightened some areas just as I put strong colour in some areas, to draw the eye and make this a painterly experience not one of just recording.

Something else I was playing with here was the paint. I made it into a semi-transparent glaze (acrylic), which creates greater depth than opaque paint. I combined that with experimenting with the marks I used to build up the solids (or semi-solids).

​The paint marks I used created a lot of surface movement (her flesh doesn't sit still even though she does) and a mottled effect that led to the title, as I thought it could suggest, not just decay but more philosophically, the dissolution of what began as solid. Like life!

Have you ever commissioned a portrait? If not of yourself or a family member, then maybe of a pet or even your house?

Most people haven’t. And I’m not surprised. It’s not because they’re expensive, they can be, but so can entertainment systems that become obsolete while the portrait remains just as valuable, just as meaningful, as ever. They can also be very affordable, depending on the artist, and bearing in mind that each portrait is a bespoke (custom-made) item, usually hand-made and often with tremendous skill as well.

But seriously, most people have either never thought of commissioning a portrait or ruled it out for some reason.

Now imagine that I show up in your Facebook newsfeed or your Twitter feed, asking you to tell me the name of one of your hero(ine)s, so that I can draw them. When I’m done, I’ll share it on social media, tagging you in the post and asking you to share it with your online friends (naming me as the artist) along with a little explanation of why you chose that person as your hero.

Doesn’t that sound and feel a little different?
Fun even?

That in a nutshell is my #dailyheroes online portraiture project, a way for me to create something positive on social media without sharing videos of cats I don’t have :-) 

While the portraits are far from daily, (I find I need to do them in bursts), they have become a key part of what I bring to my online life, because of what others have brought to it. 

First of all, others bring me names, and when they do some of them share why they chose that hero(ine). It’s like being given a double gift: I get to know my friend or contact a little better and I also get to know figures (past and present) whom I may never have heard of before, or I will learn more about in my research.

Secondly, others have brought me their enthusiasm, both when bringing names and when “receiving” the drawing, and sharing them, whether they were the original commissioner or not.

I love the conversation that’s resulted, and the nascent sense of community building around it, at least for me.

So, when the producer of Night Time (a late night Rogers TV talk show) approached me about appearing in their current season, I knew which project I wanted to talk about! The segment originally aired on Friday, December 4, and will repeat. I will see if I can get a recording of it to share online.

Meanwhile, if you have a hero(ine) you’d like to share, please do so in the comments below, or on Facebook or Twitter (those words are live links).

I am posting the results in an album on Flickr as well.

PS: The name #dailyheroes is what's called a hashtag. For anyone unfamiliar with how those work, you can search for them in the search bar on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram for example, (you must include the "#" which is the hashtag proper) and if anyone has used the term you enter (it has to be all one word), you will be able to see the posts where they used it.

While reading The Guardian (a UK newspaper) online, I came across the headline that Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, had had her first official portrait painted, I could hardly wait to see it. I mean she's a gorgeous, vivacious and charismatic young princess, (but not so young as to be a bland, blank slate)... what could go wrong?

So when I opened the story and saw a portrait Thomas Kincaide (the late, self-branded 'Painter of Light') might have been proud of, I was very, very disappointed.

Now I am usually someone who looks for and finds the positive in all kinds of artwork (ask any of my students, or people who attend my Gallery Walk & Talks), but faced with a portrait this bland, this made-for-greeting-cards, (in stark contrast to the 

the subject), it seems worthwhile to consider what went wrong. 

First, what went right?

If you visit the original story in The Guardian (just click on the painting), you will see that the painting is considerably larger than life, which seems suitable for the Duchess's personality. 

I have no doubt that the proportions and features were carefully measured and re-measured so as to be accurately rendered. 

Also, as in real life I'm sure, lots of attention was lavished on her hair.

OK, so what went wrong?

Too much focus on accurate rendering has led to a portrait that looks like Kate might look aged 50 having had some tasteful but effective cosmetic procedures done. 

The soft focus airbrush effect has got to die, it looks like a Breck shampoo ad from the 1970s, (remember them?) and terribly kitsch.

A person's beauty, personality and vitality come from within not from their surface appearance, the same surface applied to a different inner person would look different (as often happens with twins as they age for example). 

There are loads of gorgeous people who don't have classically beautiful features and proportions, who aren't young and perfect-looking but they make our heads swivel, they are magnetic.

The artist in this case needed to be freer in his application of the paint (make actual marks; give the paint the lively personality he needed to convey about the very lively Kate!); make artistic decisions, including altering the measured proportions of the face, to create a more accurate feeling for the person being portrayed. Accurate measurement ≠ truth. 

A key way artists take responsibility in their work is by making artistic decisions, whether that means editing, altering, adding, distorting and/or doing other things. Sometimes those decisions are going to work better than others, but they will still represent an attempt to communicate a point of view.

I feel badly for Emsley, the pressure of painting this beautiful and much-loved royal couldn't have been heavier, and while I'm sure he did his best I think he knows it's a disappointment because The Guardian reports he “said he had faced one difficulty with the portrait. Kate, he said, was just too beautiful to make a good subject.“

That does sound rather like making an excuse though doesn't it? I would have been happier if he'd said that her beauty was a challenge to adequately convey, because she is patently an excellent portrait subject, but the best subjects aren't only the easy ones.

What do you think of the new portrait? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.