VIRGINIA MCKIMMEY

Growing up in the splendor of the Ozark Mountain village of Eureka Springs, Arkansas, Virginia McKimmey’s deeply artistic nature was nurtured not only by talented and loving parents, but also by the influence of the colorful artist colony that was and is “Eureka”.

After receiving a degree in Art from the University of Arkansas, this prolific and multi-talented artist taught drawing classes as she pursued her master’s in the field of art. While illustrating fashion for major department stores, such as Dillard’s, Inc., McKimmey’s hunger for excellence carried her to study with some very impressive painters in workshops from the U.S. to Mexico to Western Europe. These include The Woodstock School of Art, New York, and Scottsdale Artists School., Arizona, where she complete workshops with Laura Robb of Taos, N.M. and Milt Kobayashi of New York, in the Pyrenees in Western Europe and San Miguel, Mexico with the popular impressionist, Barry Thomas. She has also attended many workshops in and around her home in Little Rock.

McKimmey was lifted into the category of the masters recently when she was chosen to be in the showing, “Hilton Head Collects, Private Treasures, public View’. This is s a fantastic peek into the favorite pieces of people owning works by names such as Matisse, Miro, Wyeth, Lautrec and McCaw, courtesy of the Walter Greer Gallery. Awards include the Foster Harris Award and the Staff Award, Arkansas Repertory Theater.

Using models and her own photography, capturing real people going about daily activities, McKimmey paints quickly, working wet into wet. Her ability to evoke the glow, the hope and the pain, of the human spirit with characters that speak to us with such familiarity is truly uncanny. Abandoning the super-sized canvas, she has chosen to display her warm and emotion-evoking characters, mostly female, in a more intimate format.