Constance Kilgore received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Colorado and a Master of Arts degree from New York University. She has studied with the late Elmer Bischoff and with Stanley Boxer, and was awarded a Master Teacher’s fellowship at Vermont Studio Center.
Her work has been exhibited in group and solo shows in England, Estonia and throughout the United States.
Communication that predates written language, markings that evoke the landscape of the subconscious— this is the essence of Constance Kilgore’s work.
As a young American artist living in London, Kilgore’s early paintings were informed by the English Terrain, particularly by prehistoric earthworks and stone circles found throughout Britain. Kilgore considered these monuments and their markings to be a form of communication predating written language whose messages had since been muddied or lost.
This notion of lost communication resonated with Kilgore, who considers herself an intuitive painter despite her formal university training. She began stitching symbols, folds and pleats into her canvases – markings to evoke the landscape of the subconscious. In time, the markings began to suggest umbels, pods and other plant forms. Her Hortus Imaginarius cycle was born from these images.
Kilgore began to attract critical attention when her painting Georgica was admitted to the John Moores Liverpool Exhibition XI. There she found herself exhibiting with the pantheon of British painters, among them David Hockney, Patrick Heron and Howard Hodgkin. Georgica was bought by the Littlewoods Organisation, presenters of the exhibition, before the exhibit opened to the public. Two years later, her painting Haptic was accepted to JMLE XII, and purchased by the Sheffield City Art Museum.
In 1981 Kilgore returned to New York City where she maintained a studio until her move to the countryside in 1994. During this period she established herself as a children’s portrait artist known for her ability to capture the quiet expression of the essential child and was commissioned by families across the US and Europe.
After a move to the countryside in the 1990s and a residency at the Polli Talu Arts Center in rural Estonia, Kilgore’s composition turned skyward. She has a delicate approach with paint and color and is able to capture the nuance of atmosphere and light across the landscape. Her monumental cloud paintings combine the magnificence of nature and plein air painting with the spontaneity of abstraction.
Kilgore’s work is being embraced by Evidence Based Design leaders in New England, and she has recently begun to integrate her education in Expressive Arts and her background as a yoga teacher to offer workshops that help participants connect to their intuition and creativity on the canvas and in life.
*See Constance Kilgore’s CV HERE.
