By Leah Shapiro
When asked for a motto, artist Kim Attwooll turns to a quote by painter Robert Henri: “The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.” Recipients of Kim’s greeting cards often remark on how happy they make them feel. Given Kim’s optimistic personality and use of bright colors, it comes as no surprise that her watercolors put a smile on people’s faces. “Inspiration feeds on itself. So if you’re inspired by something, it becomes a wild fire,” she says. “It’s never ending. If I live to be 999, I’ll never get everything finished.”
Raised on the north shore of Long Island in New York, Kim was the eldest of three children. An imaginative child, she always had an affinity for art. “My earliest memory was around five years old. I was so happy if I had a pink crayon and a blue crayon…I’d draw, draw, draw.”
(Photo of the artist by Leah Shapiro)
Watercolors are Kim’s medium of choice, despite the caveats. “I was being told constantly that watercolor is a very difficult medium and you must do this and you must never do that.” Most artists, for instance, don’t paint dark over light. Kim loves it. She says, “It makes glowing colors!”
After graduating from high school in 1965, she moved to England to study fine arts at Wallasey College of Art. She met Jim at the nearby Liverpool University and soon after, they were engaged.
In 1967, she traveled back home to Long Island to work as a bank teller and earn some money before their wedding. Two years later, they were married and immediately moved to England’s city of Derby. Their son Jon was born there in 1971. When Jon was still a baby, they returned to Long Island, where their daughter Melanie was born in 1974.
Fast forward to 1984. For a decade, Jim had been making a two-hour commute twice a day from their home to a job on Wall Street. When the boatyard across the street from their home went on the market, he jumped at the opportunity for a shorter travel time to work. They purchased the boatyard and took trips on their sailboat during the summer. In the evenings, once the kids were fed and the payroll for the employees was completed, Kim would take out her watercolor palettes and create beautiful scenes. She attached the completed paintings to cards to give to her mother or friends.
In 1996, she and Jim got out of the boatyard biz. They thought, Now that we are footloose and fancy free, let’s go to the warmth, and moved to Sarasota, Florida. With her mother’s encouragement, Kim began her greeting card business, A Small Work of Art. She sold dozens of cards to wholesale clients. “Nobody was as nuts as I was to do something like that,” says Kim, recalling the time it took to paint originals. “It was an unusual product and a niche market.” Still today, her subjects of choice are nature inspired, including birds, landscapes, and flowers.
After September 11, she says, the market changed and people weren’t spending as much money on greeting cards. Around that time, she introduced a new line called Enhanced Prints. The prints were embellished with raised paint and sparkles, making each one unique. “The improvement in consumer grade printers has given me the freedom to paint more complex and detailed paintings for card production,” says Kim. “When my business was all about original watercolors on cards, I was confined to keeping the images simple in order to produce the volume required to make the business worthwhile.” Although the cards are typically blank inside, custom orders are available for enhanced print cards, which are a hit for the holidays.
In 2006, Jim and Kim moved to the Olympic Peninsula in Washington. Imagine snow-capped mountains, eagles, and orcas. “Happily my business is very portable,” says Kim. They decided, however, that they wanted to be closer to family. Their daughter lived in Virginia, son in Wisconsin, and parents in Tryon. So, in 2010, they packed their bags and relocated to Tryon, just six minutes away from her parents who are in their 90s and recently celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary. Their secret? Each other. “Dad has a brilliant sense of humor and loves mom to bits.”
Kim says her landscapes are “figments of my observation” as they are painted from her memories, rather than from photographs. “I finish my landscapes with a playful quirk. I add two birds and imagine that they are Jim and me flying over and into the newly created vista to explore it.”
Offering framed paintings, cards, pendants, and pyrography on wood, Kim recently opened Small Work of Art Gallery at Down to Earth Garden Center, 1080 S. Trade Street in Tryon. Hours are Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Sunday from noon until 5 p.m. On Wednesday, September 7, from 2:30–4:30 p.m. at the Gallery, Kim will host a free watercolor demonstration. Reservations (required) can be made by calling Down To Earth Garden Center at 828.859.2283.
Watercolor lessons are available by appointment for groups of four over four weeks or an intensive weekend session. To see more of Kim’s work, visit The North Carolina Arboretum, Grovewood Gallery, Twigs and Leaves, Vines of Tryon, Case Garden Designs, Highland Books, and Kathleen’s Gallery. To learn more, visit handmadecardsbykim.com, email kim@asmallworkofart.com, or call 828.395.1640. Visits to her studio are by appointment.
