Just months after I graduated from the Massachusetts college of Art in1991, I was in a near fatal skydiving accident. That was the beginning of a career derailed, for seventeen years. I'm back now, with experiences that have changed my life, and my art. I know difficulty. I know disability. They have made me more sensitive to "The Individual", the general theme of my work.

I prefer mostly, though not exclusively, to depict a single individual who reveals their character through expression, body language or action. I prefer individuals who are commonly overlooked as individuals, having been stereotyped within a cultural division. Take for example homeless Vietnam veterans, we think we know what “they” look like. To know an individual vet is to know something else, it is to see a unique picture.

I myself have been classified as “fully disabled”. My dependence on social services has left me with an income well below “federal poverty levels.” As a long term result of this, I live in a trailer, I love the good Lord, Jesus Christ, and am missing several teeth. People may chuckle, and remember their favorite “Redneck” jokes. Some may even be accurate. Still I would say, “People don’t know anything about me.” I try to tell the stories of the people around me. Many of those stories are from children with no real voice of their own.

As an artist I am not able to classify myself within established terms. I am inspired and motivated by the painters Mucha, Monet, Cassatt and van Gogh. I consider my work to be “painterly,” but I do not paint. Color mixing and brushwork are too inconsistent to be comfortable to me. My primary medium is marker and color pencil. I also work with pencil, pastel and ink People have used the words “realistic” or “realism” to describe me. This is inaccurate. “Realistic” in the sense of photo-realism, is absolutely not accurate. My work has a style very unlike photo-realism. I delight and seek to emulate in the flat color and decorative line of the nouveau-artist and the gestural mark that so clearly creates form of the impressionist. I also do not create “Realism” in the sense of the late 19th century artist. I want to show a perceived reality, not the literal one so important to early realists.

I work at my art full time. I try to be prolific. I want nothing more than to be able to support myself as an artist, just so I can keep making art. To me this is as important as breathing. I have been making it for years but I’ve reached the point where if I cannot sell it, I will have to stop.

I hesitate to go on. I fear how I ramble when I talk about my art and my need to visually tell peoples stories. I do not speak well, I say too much. I say the wrong thing. I speak with pictures. My training is in Illustration. Illustration is about story telling. Story telling, other people's stories. I need them. I'm good at it. I can say no more except to let my work speak for itself.

To see it, just click "portfolio" above

Vikki King

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