Bernie Klim has been surprising art lovers for decades, and yet his work remains fresh as if created yesterday or just a moment ago. Klim’s exhibit now on view at the Mattapoisett Free Public Library took this visitor to the edge of abstract expression and then slowly, like a gentle rain, soaked my view in color. The exhibit is titled Nature’s Cakewalk.
Klim studied at the Massachusetts College of Art, earning a BFA and later a master’s in education at Cambridge College. He pursued a teaching career and continued painting as time allowed, accepting commissions. Of his art production, Klim said that painting was always there and that the commissions just kept on coming.
Asked to describe his style of painting, Klim said, “It’s expressive, reactionary, impromptu, a quick process like alla prima.” (Alla prima in this case means painting single applications of paint versus layering the paint to create depth and light.)
Klim spoke tenderly about his subject matters, which include local nature scenes and architecture. The brushstrokes while conveying a fluid sense of the immediacy of a moment are also comfortable to the eye and exciting to the mind.
“I want to engage people, give them an emotional experience,” he said, noting that while the finished works are recognizable as trees and plants or buildings, the movement found therein is evident, “not a straightforward approach.”
Klim said he works primarily with acrylic on canvas, and each brush stroke is a “springboard” to finding the composition.
All visual artists speak to the matter of light, finding the light, capturing the light and expressing the light – because light brings the color to life. That is true of Klim’s works in massive doses. Clicking through his online catalog, one finds a world of color in a collection titled Seacoast Inspirations.
Also on view at the library is a small collection of ink drawings. These pieces truly convey the rapidity with which Klim moves across a virgin field, laying down shadows and lines of cityscapes or still-life works that depart from the traditional to the imaginative to the fantastical.
Klim’s life and his artistic endeavors have taken him from a struggling painter to a highly sought after designer of interior works of art on commission. Like the brushstrokes of his paintings, he floated on that experience, thinking, “…where can it go from here?”
Today Klim finds inspiration in local landscapes, places he has enjoyed since childhood and structures that invite him to trust his process and simply go with the flow. A former adult student of Klim’s said that he encouraged his students to simply try to make a brushstroke and find out what can happen when one simply lets go. Klim is still letting go, and we are all better for it.
As a supplement to the exhibit, visit Klim’s website at bernieklim.com.
Mattapoisett Free Public Library
By Marilou Newell