Kristin Malin has exhibited in Maine at the O’Farrell Gallery, the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, LC Bates Museum, the State House, Atrium Gallery at the University of So. ME, the Emory Arts Center at the University of Maine/Farmington, Maine Art Scene Virtual Gallery, and several panels of her work are installed in the Auburn Art Wall. Her work has also been included in national juried exhibitions at Louisiana State University, Creative Arts Workshop, Grey Art Gallery/NYU, New York Studio School, and the West Kortright Centre.
After receiving a BFA in painting from Louisiana State University, Malin attended the New York Studio School and received an MFA in painting from Columbia University. In New York, Malin exhibited in Lower East Side galleries, received an Artist’s Space grant, and was a finalist for the Bronx Museum of the Arts Artists in the Marketplace program. After moving to Maine, Malin exhibited at the O’Farrell Gallery, executed exhibition murals for the Maine Maritime Museum, and was a visiting artist in local schools and libraries. Her work was included in The Art of Maine in Winter by Carl Little. She participated in an artist residency on Governors Island in New York City and at the Catskill Center for Conservation and Development. She was nominated for the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award and presented her work at Pecha Kucha events in Rockland, Portland, and Kennebunk, Maine. Recently, she successfully raised funds to print a reproduction of a painting from her residency on Governors Island, a 19 panel folding panorama of New York from Governors Island, which is in the library at Printed Matter in New York. Malin is currently represented by Caldbeck Gallery.
Malin enjoys the immediacy of painting from nature as the elements change with time, and considers it an effort to capture the dynamics of fleeting moments. The paintings are concise, intuitively rendered responses to carefully observed and closely viewed events. Each brushstroke exists for its own sake, and corresponds to a moment of seeing. Brushstrokes are layered over thin washes and each other, each stroke accruing the narrative and depth of each moment, while composing the structure of the painting’s surface. Malin is challenged by the rigor required in capturing moving water and clouds, and is excited by the freedom to search for color and light in the abstract, two-dimensional structure of painting. Continuing the exploration in the studio, the work straddles the line between representation and abstraction.
