"Downtown Houston 1 " Archival Print on Aluminum, 30" x 71", 2004

Kidd's studio

"Maas Tunnel Evolute" 20" x 30", Archival Print, edition of 6, Nov 2003

"Megapolis" Mixed Media, 24" x 10.5" x 1.5"

"Oil n' Water" Mixed Media

"Stack" Archival Print, 20" x 30", edition of 6, Aug 2001

"Thames Boil" Archival Print, 20" x 30", editon of 6, March 1999

"Downtown Houston 2" Archival Print on Aluminum Panel, 60" x 72", 2004

Studio Tools

Kidd's work twists, warps and engages in it's dialogue of biomorphic humor and oddness. His newest works are a homage to his fascination with the drama of the modern urban scene.

FA:   You are in a new exhibition called Ultrachrome. Where the ink is the content. Tell me about the change in art technology and has this led to a change in your art practice.

JK:  Absolutely, most of the work is now shot with a digital camera and then I develop nearly all my pieces within Photoshop. I may still complete a piece in real time (analogue) with paint. I very much consider myself as a painter, painting in pixels, many of the actions and techniques require the same perceptive skills that painting requires. The adaptive work, if successful is almost impossible to detect because your medium, your paint are the actual pixels of the image and are often stolen from photograph and reapplied to other areas. All the principals of colour, tone, form and composition come into play within a much more real context as you alter and manipulate the chosen photograph.

FA:   What work did you put in the Ultrachrome show? What is the work about?

I chose this scene as I saw the potential to heighten the energetic life exuding from these buildings and structures. I wanted to capture the enigmatic drama of place emphasized by the time-lapse photography and the panoramic view.

FA: How does change in technology affect your archive of images. What was standard 10 years ago is now obsolete, how are you adapting?

JK:  I rarely make slides any more. Most of the work is recorded with my digital camera and printed on letter-sized paper. And I use two external hardrives and keep two copies of all my files.

FA:   What drew you to making artwork?

JK:   A combination of aptitute in this area, compulsive desire to express myself creatively, hereditary. Growing up with art all around me.

FA:   Your 2-dimensional work is very optical. Tell us why the paintings try so hard to bend into 3-dimensions.

JK:   I want my works invite, elicit, and engage the viewer, and this is done through variety of formal devices. I have never been happy with the pictorial plane as a surface behind which the pictorial illusion starts its quest. The idea that the viewer sits outside the painting in reality (objective realm), and the artist is given the realm behind the pictorial surface (subjective realm) seems to short-change the artist. So often, the illusion being created behind the surface on which the painting hangs seems distant and physically un-engaging. I feel the artist or at least the work should interact more directly within the viewer’s space. I want the works to engage the viewer in the temporal domain, to excite or disturb, to thrust forth the subjective offering and contextualize it in the objective space.

FA:   Is this where some of your installations come from?

FA: Describe your process in your altered environments.

JK:   I use the elements in the photographic environment, the architecture, the civic infrastructure, the geology and organic matter as my material. The pixels that represent these elements are my paint, my, marble, my clay. I feel and empathize with the elements in the composition, as I imagine the structures and forms growing and replicating, deconstructing and re-constructing. These selected places have an anthropomorphic or biomorphic presence that need just be emphasized and expressed. Each monolithic structure and form relates to the other as I attempt to animate them within their scene. I am ever on the look out for awe-inspiring vistas and terrain that have the potential for composed adaptation.

FA:  Pick one of your favorite pieces and describe how you created it.

JK:   I am usually most enamored with the most current work so say ‘Downtown Houston 2”. This piece is made from a number of long exposure night shots. I used up to 30 images that have been carefully cut, sliced, overlaid, distorted, painted, Blended and composed, so as to replicate something of the experience I had standing in front of that scene. The piece is then mounted on aluminum panel that is cut to follow the profile of the piece.

FA:   How much of your concept is based on the push and pull between digital technology and more traditional art methods like painting or sculpture. Can this didactic nature be compared to you and your environment or to you and your family as it seems the identity of the artist is at play in all three relationships.

JK:   Digital technology is simply another tool as with paint, brushes, chisels and all manner of creative implements

In addition to curating, Kidd shows in LA, Houston, NY and London. The grandson of Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth, his work will appear in the upcoming family show in Britain " The Nicholson's, a Vital Simplicity".

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