camellia season, no. 1; editioned print

Camellia Season, No.1. Kim West. 2021

22.5"x15" image size. 24.5"x17" paper size, including 1" surrounding white border.

Archival Digital Print on 100% cotton Museum Etching paper.

First Edition of 50. Hand signed and numbered by the artist.                                 

Painted in Los Angeles, Printed in Los Angeles.

January marks the beginning of camellia season in the corner of LA where I live. By the end of the month, the roses will have had their hard cut back; there is still citrus on the orange and lemon trees, and the kumquat tree wants to be entirely ripe. The garden is filling up with greens - kales, arugula, lettuces and herbs. An eager nasturtium bloom pops up here and there above tangles of lily pad leaves. The bounty of color at this time of year explodes in layered petals on the camellia bushes and trees. Planted long before we took over this yard, they are fireworks. Mounds of pinks and reds with bursting yellow centers, they float on twiggy stems before turning into piles of saturated confetti when they become too heavy, and stick their landings. 

#NecessaryAdjacents  -

From Spring 2019 through 2022, I was working on two large-scale/environmentally scoped mural projects that, at times, required exacting, tedious and slow studio processes. Though that type of work is often meditative and satisfying, at times it could also feel tight. To counter, I began to make loose and quick paintings inspired by whatever was blooming on my daily commutes through the yard and garden from house to backyard studio. I was thinking of this work as literally 'adjacent' because they were painted next to, and just out of frame from, my mural project work. At the beginning,  I was also thinking about the LACMA's installation of 'Raushcenberg: 1/4 mile', and time spent in a previous summer at Monet's Giverny. Also during this time (from 2020 onwards), anxieties over ever-divisive political landscapes, social injustices and heartbreaks, the ramifications and devastations of the global pandemic, climate change impacts, lock-downs and zoom school coalesced and it all felt like too much. The 'adjacents' became #NecessaryAdjacents. Creating this work provided a lifeline and escape into small moments of beauty and respite.