Extrapolations
Opening Reception April 25th, 2026 4pm-6pm
Show runs from -
April 25th, 2026 - May 30th, 2026
(This piece serves as a placeholder image to show the artist style of art. It will not necessarily be in the exhibit.)
Biography
|
Kimberly Sheridan was born May 27th, 1960 in the small town of Canton, N.Y., just 20 miles shy of the Canadian border. As a very young child, she was moved around frequently until finishing childhood and youth in Glens Falls, N.Y. on the southern edge of Adirondack State Park. The public school system there in the 1970s was typical of middle class education insofar as emphasis on sports and test curriculum left no interest in promoting art studies.
When she picked up Emily Bronte's novel "Wuthering Heights" in her early teens and read, her mind felt like it had burst open. The organized school curriculum had no room to recognize or encourage such raging curiosity. Thus, while physically attending school by day, mentally she educated herself on her own when she could. This self exploration continues to this day. In 1984, she and her future husband, George Ormsby, moved to Baltimore MD to start a new life from scratch. On a trip to Yorkshire England in 1988, a long walk on the moors brought another sudden breakthrough experience. With George's support, Kimberly began to teach herself art. By taking a sketchbook and practicing quick drawing, she used them to experiment with simple paintings to display and sell at street fairs and cafes. The year 2013 birthed the major art project Kimberly is best known for. The Million Gun Victims March is a portrait project dedicated to memorialing forgotten and ignored victims of gun violence. These portraits are gifted to grieving loved ones as a tool to transform suffering. The Baltimore Ethical Society, Moms Demand Action, and a major grant from Everytown for Gun Safety has aided in reuniting portraits to loved ones, as well as establishing the website at https://vilomah.life. When the Key Bridge collapsed in March 26, 2024, Kimberly immediately painted the portraits of the six men who perished with it. Thanks to Maria Aldana, co-chair of the archives at the Baltimore Museum of Industry, six prints of these were donated, making the BMA the first Museum to house examples of Sheridan's work. More importantly, on November 24, 2024, with Maria Aldana's help, Sheridan delivered the six original portraits into the families' own hands at the BMA archives. Sheridan considers this the greatest day of her life. "Extrapolations " are a continuing series of genre works based on the almost 30 years of journal sketches taken here in Baltimore and everywhere she has traveled. She hopes the same passion she puts into her portraits applies to these genre pieces as a testimonial to the genuine wonder of seemingly ordinary things. |
Statement
"Extrapolations" sprung abruptly from upheavals in a time of pandemic. As a lone traveler through life, the pressures of enforced isolation didn't affect me as much as many. Still, the idea of being mostly housebound concerned me over how to expend my always bubbling over supply of energy. My training as a self taught artist for the past 30 years has been to carry sketchbook and markers everywhere I go. Upon spotting an object that caught my attention, I whipped out the markers and sketched the item as quickly as I could. This taught me to quicken my impressions and keep my hand loose for painting portraits, which is what I usually paint. As I scanned the pages of these journals and looked over all my supply of newly purchased empty canvases and other supplies, the idea of extrapolating from these sketches and turning them into genre pieces provided the answer. Thus began the years of constant, exuberant painting that makes me a better portratist today. With "Extrapolations " an artist invites the public to peek into their personal visual diary. Hopefully, these images can light a spark within the viewer and help them see the wonder of the ordinary scenes around them.