Kindah Khalidy is a painter and textile designer based in California who has our hearts in a bit of a mess with her wonderfully playful and exciting abstract works. She’s super talented, and makes the kind of work that makes you want to pick up a brush and canvas in a big white room and just go absolutely bananas. Her paintings, which explore the layering and relationships between colour, shape and line are vivid and energetic and when we look at them we just can’t help but smile.
Inspired by positivity and fun stuff like glitter and confetti, Kindah’s working process is one of intuition and improvisation. Starting with one mark or colour, she works without a plan, building the works based on feeling or mood. The result is a style that is versatile in its sense of freedom and child-like naivety. One minute she’s applying her bright shapes and loose mark-making to gallery walls and icing cakes, and the next collaborating with high profile brands like The Land of Nod and Nordstrom. She’s also no stranger to murals, sculptures, installation and apparel.
Kindah earned a BFA in painting, drawing and textiles from California College of the Arts in 2011 and as well as creating her large canvas painting in acrylic, makes beautiful limited edition clothing and accessories rooted in her love of textiles. She balances the two practices from her garage studio in the Mission District of San Francisco, spending her days skipping between cutting and sewing orders and painting. Her online shop is packed with good stuff — silk scarves and adorable hand painted clutches, or enamel pins in her distinctive colourful shapes to turn every shirt into a party.
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