Texas
Rita Kirkman, Transience of Innocence, pastel, 26 x 19.
IN A WAY, Rita Kirkman’s winning entry TRANSIENCE OF INNOCENCE was years in the making. The inspiration for her pastel painting came from a photograph the New Braunfels, TX, artist snapped of her daughter Audrey years ago, curled up on a bed in a hotel room. In the photograph Audrey is around 6 years old, but by the time Kirkman completed the painting, a decade had passed. “The hotel bedspread was hideous, so it took me a while to come back to that photo to make use of it as a reference,” she says. “When I did, I thought all I needed to do was something different with the bedspread.”
Thus encouraged, the artist arranged coral-hued drapery at the edge of her bed at home, shined a spotlight on it, and snapped some photos. Photoshop—a regular tool in her creative repertoire—allowed Kirkman to construct her final compositional reference. “When I was done and had it how I liked it, that’s when the title came to me,” she says. “When I finally painted it, my daughter was 17 or 18. She seemed innocent in the photograph, so with this passing of time, I hit on the transience of innocence.”
Kirkman has been painting in pastels for years—since age 11, to be exact. But she still takes several workshops each year, picking up “bits and pieces” of painterly advice from artists like Richard McKinley and Desmond O’Hagan. Soon she’ll be passing on her own wisdom to students: Kirk-man has been invited to teach at the 2020 Australian Pastel Expo. Find her work at Carriage House Gallery, Boerne, TX; The Gallery at Brookwood, Brookshire, TX; and The Gallery at Round Top, Round Top, TX. —Kim Agricola
This story was featured in the December 2019/January 2020 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art December 2019/January 2020 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.
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