Work samples
-
MGVM: Million Gun Victims MarchMy artistic career begun only a few years ago when I started the community art project, Million Gun Victim March. The goal this project is to put faces to the statistics behind gun violence. The first of these goals is to bring the paintings home to the families. In order to do this, we have commissioned a local print lab to scan and print copies of the portraits. The second goal is to have a permanent space for these prints to live in Baltimore and for it to become a memorial for the victims. Baltimore has a memorial to soldiers fallen abroad but not to the people who fell in their own city. The third goal is to connect with and recruit other artists, trained or untrained; to have them join our mission by either helping out with the organization or by collaborating by making portraits.
About Kimberly
Baltimore City
Born in upstate New York in 1960, I moved to Baltimore with my then fiance and lifelong mentor even after death, my husband George in 1984. I finally started teaching myself oil painting in 1990. I have been working on my present project, the Million Gun Victims March since April of 2013.
Jump to a project:
Too Young to Vote: Teenagers
A lot of the work around this project is to reach out to the younger generation and hopefully give a sense of empathy. Each portrait is a careful study of the victim, their families, and presents them as they might have been today if that final bullet did not pierce through them. What would these young people have been able to acheive if only they had been allowed to live. If only...
Young Fathers
Being a parent is hard. Being a child without a parent is harder still. Oftentimes, being a father is a complex role to fill with many expextations, naunces, and sterotypes to battle. However, the sterotype of the absentee father is not performed by choice by any of these younger victims. What would they have taught their children they left behind?
Young Mothers
A mother is the one parent we are often told that needs to take care of the children and home. What happens when they are taken away not by choice but by force? Being a young mother is never easy and yet these mothers have paid the ultimate price anyone person could ever pay. Each stroke and each color is performative; like a mother stroking a child's hair.
Most Precious Among Us: Children
Orphan; the loss of ones parents.
Widow; the loss of ones spouse.
However, there is no word in English that applies to parents who have lost children. Perhaps it is because the very idea of losing ones children is so horrible that we have never wanted to create such a terribly wounded word.
Children are the hardest for me to paint, to imagine, especially the children whose own parents decided to remove them from this world; their rights to that title, of a parent, seem wrong and distrubing.
Widow; the loss of ones spouse.
However, there is no word in English that applies to parents who have lost children. Perhaps it is because the very idea of losing ones children is so horrible that we have never wanted to create such a terribly wounded word.
Children are the hardest for me to paint, to imagine, especially the children whose own parents decided to remove them from this world; their rights to that title, of a parent, seem wrong and distrubing.
Loving Couples
These couples found wonder and beauty within each other. Some people sought to destroy their bonds, either knowingly or unknowingly; a bullet cannot tell the difference.
Artists
Many victims turn out to be artists themselves. From muscians, painters, singers, and many others, these artistic sould were taken way before their time.
Across the Generations
The greatest pain that a community can feel is not only losing perhaps a few of its members but whole families either at the same time or watching them slowly getting picked off. These victims represent the reality of what we are living and the way these outsider weapons kill communities.
-
Jennifer Jeffry Browne 1984-2015 and Kester Browne 2007-2015
-
Travis Hiatt 1966-2015 and granddaughters Jayden Hiatt and Kayden Hiatt June -November 2015
-
Linda Hutton 1962-2016, Emily McDonald 1994-2016, Teagan Hutton October -November 2016
-
Chanette Neal 1975-2018, Justice Allen 1997-2018, and son Name Unknown
-
Rhoden FamilyHannah Gilley 1996-2016 Christopher Rhoden Jr. 1999-2016 Christopher Rhoden Sr. 1975-2016 Dana Rhoden 1978-2016 Frankie Rhoden 1995-2016 Gary Rhoden 1977-2016 Hannah Rhoden 1997-2016 Kenneth Rhoden 1972-2016
-
Frank Turner 1965-2014 and son Anthony Turner 1992-2014
-
Matthew Woods Jr. 1973-2016 and Kimani Johnson
Brothers and Sisters
The thought of losing a child is unimaginable; the thought of losing more is utterly destroying. These victims represent the heartbreaking reality of many families, especially in Baltimore.
Wisdom of Ages
One of the great things about growing older is knowing many things about life, living, and hopefully, happiness. This group illustrates the huge loss of wisdom that these victims could have passed on to their communities and their families either verbally or through their actions. Although they had more time on this earth than some of the other victims, they too were taken before they should have gone.
They Served Their Country and Were Murdered Here
These brave veterans survived the horrors of war only to come home and be shot in their own city. The victims here illustrate that perhaps the streets of Baltimore are more deadly and dangerous than those found abroad.