Finding a way back to the canvas – the story of Kishma V.S. Penn
![Kishma's wall shows her three favourite pieces together [L-R The He-She, This is Every Man and The Heads of Space]. Photo:supplied](https://www.virginislandsnewsonline.com/cache/images/800x_k_Kishmas_Wall.JPG)
“I have always had a love for the arts,” Ms Penn explained, it was an inspiration that came when she was about six years of age by way of the names of cartoon characters – the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – a quartet of action heroes each named after renaissance painters; Michaelangelo, Leonardo, Donatello and Raphael respectively. She hopes to someday be seen as a sort of modern day renaissance woman herself.
She started writing poetry around this time, not very complex as can be expected from a young child, but poetry that in turn fuelled a love for visual arts itself. “Drawing was always a part of what I used to do,” she added, “and when my father died, I started to write more because that was my only coping mechanism.” Her father assisted this drive as he provided books in classic literature that added even more of an interest in the arts and her drawing took off from there on.
During her attendance at the then BVI High School she started painting but stopped abruptly. Ms Penn said she stopped painting when Art stopped being a required course at school and focused more on her writing at the time. Some of her struggles at high school even gave her the idea of starting work on an autobiography as well.
Three years ago, at the age of 26, she met a friend who was also a visual artist and spent time around her paintings and saw her at work constantly. Coupled with the fact that around this time she was asked to participate in the BVI London House exhibit and agreed to do so, this resulted in an urge that gave her the desire to continue painting again. She contributed a few paintings to the exhibit and began to experiment subsequently with acrylics as well.
Her confessed limitations at the time, she noted, inspired her to strive for even more. “I now look at colours in a different way,” she noted as a result of her experiences with acrylics. After starting out by using structured, hard-edged and ‘Jackson Pollock-like’ pieces, she has now transitioned into moving with the ‘fluidity of the paint’ she said. “I had to force myself outside of my comfort zone… I attacked the very things that I was least comfortable with – the human body and the face.” She explained that these were complex pieces that at first made her uncomfortable but she has already embarked on a challenge to master the form in an upcoming series that she has planned to do.
A Draughtsperson by profession, Ms Penn was trained at the Southern Polytechnic State University in Marietta, Georgia. She described herself as a weirdo, a label she doesn't necessarily fully subscribe to but reasoned that “being different [in the Virgin Islands] is often synonymous with being crazy.”
According to Ms Penn, persons often do not equate her being different with being eccentric or strange, but simply blurt out ‘oh that crazy girl from East End’; it is something that she finds annoying, “I’m not crazy, but that is what they refer to me as”.
Themes
Many of the themes that she works on are often autobiographical, “It’s actually depicting my teenage years,” Ms Penn related, “it is dark, the subject is very, very dark. It is not just the colours, but the subject itself, because it is speaking about the despair that many teenagers feel when they don’t feel that connecting closeness to their parents and loved ones and feel directionless.”
One of her pieces, she expressed, is a moving reminder of this with the inscription ‘open your heart, save a life’, etched into the inside of a heart that is a part of the piece that she painted.
“It’s about just wanting love and wanting acceptance, the negative words and the things that were said to me or were did to me during that time of my life – it’s like journalising through my painting basically,” Ms Penn remarked.
While not claiming a feeling of acceptance in the art world as a result of not being in a gallery as yet, she disclosed that she felt comfortable and free. “I’m very, very liberated in my art… I don’t feel like I’m confined to any particular structure or setting,” she added.
She readily conceded though, that although art for her is a means of expression, it also offers an opportunity for escape, “sometimes I’d go and I’ll paint the whole weekend and I’d shut out the world… but art in general,” she noted, “isn’t just about escape. Art is really a person trying to show the world a different way of viewing things, a different way of saying things.” “I don’t think people listen to me, I don’t think that I have a voice that people hear, I don’t think that I’m heard or my voice is respected… things that I want to say that I can’t get people to listen to or really hear… I put it in my art and I put it in my writing.”
An intimate goal of hers, she related, was to be able to make a significant contribution to the art community in the Virgin Islands and also to educate people through her art. It is also to have the history of our country depicted, much like other countries, through art. She wants to attempt to move locals away from the perception that art is more about realism than it actually is.
According to Ms Penn, the dark art forms, as she described them, depicted on the murals around the Virgin Islands are not the entire story of VI history. “If we are going to depict our history, then paint all of our history, don’t just paint those moments,” she said, “there is no painting that depicts the march of Wickham’s Cay… no painting about Ras Uhuru and the sacrifices of our local heroes…”
Favourite works
She numbers three works of art as being among her favourite pieces done by her. The portrait of a head titled ‘This is every man’; a woman painted nude with her legs crossed titled ‘the he-she’; and a group of heads titled ‘heads of space’.
She described ‘the he-she’ as another autobiographical piece, “she has a very powerful stance,” she said. The whole stature speaks about the power of a female, but there is still the very strong, very muscular aspect to it. “That was me growing up,” she added “a typical tomboy… I’m still the typical tomboy… I’m not the traditional girl.”
The heads of space depicts a particular point in her life that may have been about things family members said to her when she was growing up. A careful examination of the piece would indicate the intricate inclusion of strong black women such as Oprah Winfrey, Iyanla Vanzant, Halle Berry and Gabrielle Union. It also tells a story about black men as well with a focus on cars and fashion accessories.
The portrait of the head titled ‘This is every man’ the artist described as a last hurrah. The words in the painting very much speak of what the piece is about - themes of betrayal, abandonment, pain and failure.
Of all the post-modern artists she likes Vincent van Gogh, the Dutch post-impressionist painter, the best. She explained that she mostly admires his use of colour and his brush strokes. “He gave the paintings a general idea and general borders and your mind kind of fills in the rest… I’m working on pieces that do that…” she related. Charles Thomas ‘Chuck’ Close, a portrait artist, was another of her favourite artists; admired for his large life size paintings (also with no defined edges) that are almost the precursor to the pixelated images of modern times. “He does with the canvas, what an actual camera would do,” Ms Penn felt.
Ms Penn said her ultimate goal is to effect social change. Maybe not globally or regionally, but definitely within the Territory; whether it be through art like Diego Rivera, altruistically like Oprah, or social policy like Fidel Castro.
“Many may call me a Socialist,” she said, “but I just understand that my life should be more than just about being a mother to my son, daughter to my mother and sister to my siblings. Everyone should strive to make this world better for others, not just milk it for what they can get.”
She plans to do a website to feature her work in the near future but for now most of her work could be viewed on her personal Facebook page and also a Facebook fan page that will be introduced shortly.
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13 Responses to “Finding a way back to the canvas – the story of Kishma V.S. Penn ”
Kishma, I love your work, especially the Pollock-inspired piece! Also, you raised a wonderful point, that some of our local history is not depicted. I would welcome seeing your rendition of aspects of our omitted history. I wish you much success in your career as an artist.
Kudos to VINO for your regular features on the positive achievements of our youths. I look forward weekly to these articles. So inspirational and warming to the soul!