Kim Leutwyler

Born in the United States, Kim Leutwyler spent her formative years traveling from place to place. She did not spend a substantial amount of time in any given area, and only briefly lived in places like Chicago, Illinois, Arizona, and Connecticut.[2] Initially, Leutwyler sought to study accounting after finishing her high school education, but an impulse led her to enroll in the art history program at Arizona State University.[3] It was there that she focused almost exclusively on ceramics and printmaking until she received concurrent bachelor's degrees in both Studio Art and Art History. Seeking to further her education, she later graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a Painting and Drawing degree as well.[1] However, her time spent studying abroad at the University of Auckland in New Zealand was very impressionable. Leutwyler fell in love with the landscapes and spirit of adventure, and promised herself that she would once again visit the South Pacific when given the chance. An opportunity eventually presented itself, and she migrated to Australia in late 2012.

Leutwyler has actively created work through a variety of mediums to include installation, ceramics, drawing, and printmaking.[1] Predominately focusing on LGBT-identified and allied women, trans, and gender nonconforming people, her large-scale paintings stimulate dialogue in both mainstream and feminist art worlds. Her portraiture series features a mix of notable activists and artists including musician and drag queen Trixie Mattel, marriage equality activist Sally Rugg, Olympic athlete Michelle Heyman and DJ, writer and actor Faustina Agolley.

Leutwyler harbors a deeper desire to contribute to the destabilization of gender borders. As Leutwyler herself often explains, her work tends to explore the fine lines between objectification, glorification, and modification.[4] Both the fluidity and overall complexity of identity continue to generate inspiration for the artist.[2] Just as people often evolve and adapt to their surrounding social environment, they also do so upon her canvases. With a particularly unique aesthetic, Leutwyler's work harbors bold and bright blocks of color that meld with the subjects. As she elaborates in an interview:

The 'ideal' female anatomy has changed over time, with varying aesthetics that metamorphose based on age, race, geography and time period. For centuries, humans have embraced body modification as a means of expression, rites of passage, religious beliefs and cultural aesthetics. I paint my friends and the people that I care about most, who embrace a small fraction of current cultural aesthetics and modifications. Body art, plastic surgery and piercings are not uncommon among the women you see in my work.[2]

It was the historical use of patterns to contemplate concepts like beauty, piety, and even justice that invoked a deep inspiration behind much of Leutwyler's work. In fact, many of the subjects in her works are depicted before their favorite patterns. It was this very fascination that eventually led her to the discovery of Kehinde Wiley, an artist with highly naturalistic work that displays individuals posed before patterns of various cultures. Upon the realization that other artists were exploring similar boundaries, she sought further inspiration and investigation into history. This led her to artists like Caravaggio who utilized tenebrism, painting only where the light bounced off of the subject. Inspired by such techniques, she therefore adopted the practice of blending bright and vivid patterns where the shadows of the subject would be.

Another great inspiration was Robert Rauschenberg, an artist with not only art that garnered Leutwyler's attention, but a lasting legacy. He contributed a substantial amount of money and time to the establishment of organizations that supported such things as human rights and world peace. Such philanthropic efforts were something that she admired. In fact, her desire to impact the world through artistic vision remains an ultimate goal, and has since led her to the founding of a project, PhilanthropART, in which she periodically donates a portion of the proceeds from her artwork to a different non-profit organization each.[5]