Kim Tyson

In 1993 I took a trip to Mexico with a friend. We went to the Yucatan Peninsula for several weeks, and instead of a camera I took a sketchbook. Early in the morning I would go out and draw. There was so much there, the village with its black tarpaper shacks, the ocean, the palm trees, the shrieking birds. It was hot. One morning as I was sketching the backyard of an abandoned cement block house a man came over and looked at what I was drawing. He didn’t say anything. He left, and I continued my visual recording of debris and wild growth. The man came back, and handed me a beer. He patted my shoulder and smiled.After I arrived back in Baltimore I decided to quit my job at a steamship company. I was in graduate school and made a conscious decision to follow another road. Over the years I have supported my creative habits by working at a variety of positions, as a waitress in a café-gallery, as an order taker in a recycled-goods business, as a clerk in a safety supply house in Pigtown, as an art model for many years, and as an art teacher with the city public school system.

My work is all about the color. I love the wild creatures of the world, the warm and leafy places. The natural world holds more mystery for me than the world created—and then blighted—by human beings. My work isn’t about making a recording of what I see; rather, it is a testament to the emotional concern I feel about a slowly dying planet. There are cultures that believe all life is sacred. I subscribe to this philosophy, as well as to the belief that all life is interconnected. Each painting becomes a world in itself.