Kim Noble | Motionmagazine

| By Veronica Wong Diffa

KIM NOBLE
The artist of all trades.

“I don’t speak to them, I don’t see them, I don’t hear them. I don’t really have anything to do with them [Laughs].”

Surreal artist, Kim Noble, is not an artist you can forget. Her artwork, for many, is an amalgamation of skill and precision that not many artists can achieve on their own. From abstract paintings to life-like portraits, Kim is able to do it all with the aid of several identities that she embodies. Kim was diagnosed with DID, Dissociative Identity Disorder, that allows different identities to form within one body. It was only when being visited by a support worker that the personalities’ artistic talents came to surface. Patricia, the main personality of the body, talked Motion magazine through their history and explains just a few of the different personality’s artistic traits.

To read the full interview purchase the digital or print magazine here

Anon - Secret Edge

Anon, is one of my favourite artists. I take her paintings to be quite mysterious; she is also mysterious herself because she paints at night and nobody knows what her name is or what her personality is like.
I think over time, she has made the figures more obvious, whereas in the early days I thought it had a lot more movement. The figures looked a bit more blurry … could it be a figure or wasn’t it? They looked very abstract, whether it is and whether it isn’t. Is it spirits… is it things flying? But now, I think they are definitely figures. Like the ones in the ‘Silent Prayer’ painting, there’s definitely a woman and a girl kneeling down. She just pours the paint on thick and uses minimum touch so the paint is quite fresh.

[Huffs] The thing is, some of her paintings are quite large. There are a couple that are about 6 foot and they take so long to dry. One day - it was in the early days when we were probably all learning a bit more - her painting looked dry on the surface but the underneath wasn’t. It was in the middle of our studio and I needed it to be moved, so I stood it up and because of the weight of it, the painting toppled and white and black paint poured down my head [laughs]! For one thing, the painting was ruined [laughs]! It does take a long time to dry and it is fragile for quite a long time, but I do like her work.

Ken - Where do you go to

Ken. He’s interesting in his work because he puts the paint on very thick and adds a lot of texture.

When he started, all he wanted to paint was a train. That’s all he wanted to paint and he could never paint a train [Laughs]. So out of frustration he slapped the canvas onto the wall and when he pulled it off, he liked the texture it made. He turns them round as well, and when he pulls it off the walls, the texture is all spikey and the colours are mixed in a fresh way.

He really does use a lot of paint, I mean, so much of it is wasted because he’s left it on the wall! If I can come out afterwards, I don’t always, I have to scrape it all off otherwise it dries thick and pointed! I left out some wallpaper one day and tried to get him to do it the other way around - instead of putting it on the wall, put the painting on the floor and press the wallpaper on top. He’s done it a few times like that but I think he likes his own method.

He still keeps thinking he’s going to paint a train and then nothing ever comes out like a train [Laughs]. That’s all he wants to paint. And some of them are far from trains as you can see.

Ria - My Hands Are Tied

Then there are the bright colours of Ria’s - I do really like her paintings. I find it really strange because they’re obviously pictures of abuse, which is not very nice, yet the colours are all so bright which people associate with happiness. Usually, horrible pictures are very dark and morbid but she has said that she has done bright colours because they can’t be missed, and she is right - they’re so damn bright.

In her paintings, she gets a print of the one below and then puts it above like dissociation. So even though I’m not aware that she is aware she’s got DID, she is aware of dissociation because of the way she puts it in her paintings.

In the early days that I was seeing Ria, it was very difficult. When she did her first painting, Aimee was young, and I didn’t want her to see the painting. There was something about it where I felt the canvas was dirty; that I couldn’t hold it with my hands. I had to hold it with my jumper sleeves I pulled down or a towel, even though it was not dirty - it wasn’t wet or anything, it’s just that I didn’t like this painting and I needed to put it out of sight. There was some kind of emotional connection there.

Sometimes they’re hard to show in exhibitions, not just because of the content but because the colours overpower other paintings that are there. They are so vivid, but she said that people have got to see it.

Suzy - Pure

Suzy’s paintings are very interesting. When she first started, she kept painting the gold picture of ‘The Pure One’; it’s a mother and baby with scribble over it but the baby is untouched. She did loads and loads of those; I think she’s done about seven or eight of them. One day, there was one with a gold curtain over it, and when you lifted the curtain, the woman was there but there was no baby - she never painted one of those paintings again.

That’s all she kept doing when she first started to paint and after that, she copied pictures of celebrities and I thought it was an improvement from just doing this mother and baby. She started to look outside of herself.

Judy - Tears imprisoned

Judy is another one of my favourite artists. Her work has changed since she first started painting. I think it’s got a lot more texture; it’s got a lot more layering and scratching of the paint. It’s a lot more interesting than what she used to do.

One day I wanted Judy’s painting… well you see, another problem I have is that I think a painting is finished and sometimes it’s not. There was an exhibition coming up so, I took one of Judy’s to be framed and she was moaning about me taking it to be framed and that it wasn’t finished. She said why don’t I mind my own business and get a life and stop interfering with her work [Laughs]. There are some funny times.

Key - Golden

This is Key’s work. Key’s paintings have got a spiritual take on it – I [Patricia] don’t know anything about the Kabbalah or the Tree of Life.

A Rabbi analysed her paintings and said that her paintings have got meaning in the Kabbalah. He looked at them and explained about the two pillars on either side; he was saying how much all of Key’s work, even the ones that don’t look as though they are of the Kabbalah, like the ‘Heaven’s Gate’ paintings, have some connection with Hebrew and to the Kabbalah. That was quite interesting.

KIM NOBLE The artist of all trades.

“I don’t speak to them, I don’t see them, I don’t hear them. I don’t really have anything to do with them [Laughs].”

To read the full interview purchase the digital or print magazine here

To read the full interview purchase the digital or print magazine here

KIM NOBLE
The artist of all trades.