Kimberley Francis has divined a thoughtful expression in her enchanting cedar carvings that reflects a deep affinity for the human experience in our natural world. Her cutout silhouettes of little human forms, families, trees, mountains, and waves are dark and as spare as they can be, held in the spacious flowing landscape suggested by the wood grain.
A graduate of Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design and relatively new to the Sunshine Coast, Francis did some soul-searching to overcome what she calls her “post graduate malaise.”
“Upon graduation, I was feeling a bit under-inspired to add anything else to the material world, so I decided that until I felt called to a specific and personal medium and material, I was going to be quiet and wait.”
Francis had exiled herself to a lakeside off-season rental, where a visiting friend began experimenting with maple hardwood, making bracelets and rings for fun. This drew Francis to her father’s woodshop. Her dad, her sounding board and guide since earliest childhood, led her to some cedar sculpture and forms he had hollowed out. Francis had an epiphany.
“Maybe it wasn’t something that I would be adding anything to, but rather something that I would be taking away.”
Similarly, she felt called to her subject matter. Francis had spent some formative years on the West Coast, crewing on sailboats. Fun and adventure, certainly, but also a chance to experience the sensation of being inconsequential in a vast landscape. Against a backdrop of mountains, forest, and sea, she and her fellow crew members felt small but also more strongly connected to each other.
“That experience, when we saw ourselves in context of being held in a moment in that expansive space . . . knowing we belonged to each other somehow because it was really just us out there.”
Her cedar carvings are modern and minimalist and somehow also warm and reverent. Affection for her material, subjects, and their settings is evident. Francis does what feels right at every stage of her practice, avoiding any sort of automation, aiming for zero waste in her production, and using only beeswax and mineral oil to finish her pieces. From the start, feedback and a bit of synchronicity assured her she had chosen her path well.
“Every now and then, a quiet thank-you note finds its way to my inbox. The notes themselves are often beautifully timed, on a morning when I’m sleep deprived from being up in the night with our little guy (Ben, 4), yet carrying cedar from mill to truck to woodshop still needs to happen.”
Francis works from a setting that is already overflowing with abundance: her home studio set beside a fast-flowing stream, nestled in forest, in Roberts Creek.
“I like that I add nothing, and the first part of my work, when I go slowly and properly, is to see what is already there.”
