Kimble, Warren

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Kimble, Warren

Personal

Married; wife's name Lorraine; children: two. Education: Syracuse University, B.A. (fine arts), 1957. Hobbies and other interests: Antiquing, traveling, spending time with children and grandchildren.

Addresses

Home and office—Brandon, VT.

Career

Folk artist, illustrator, and designer. Kimble House, Inc., Brandon, VT, founder and proprietor, until 2006. Worked previously in advertising and as a public school art teacher. Castleton State College, Castleton, VT, professor. President, Vermont Antique Dealers Association. Exhibitions: Solo exhibitions at Frank J. Miele Gallery, New York, NY, Chase Gallery, Boston, MA, and Gallery on the Green, Woodstock, VT.

Awards, Honors

George Arents Pioneer Medal, Syracuse University, 2002, for excellence in the field of art; Award for Outstanding Industry Contribution, Gift for Life, 2004.

Writings

FOR CHILDREN

Gary Bowen, The Mare's Nest, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2001.

The Cat's Meow, Walker & Company (New York, NY), 2005.

OTHER

Ruth Cousineau, Country Suppers: Simple, Hearty Fare for Family and Friends, William Morrow (New York, NY), 1997.

Warren Kimble American Folk Artist: His Life, His Art, and Collections with Inspirations and Patterns for Creative American Folk Crafts, Landauer Books (Cumming, IA), 2000.

Sidelights

Warren Kimble has been labeled by the popular press as the foremost leading folk artist of America. It is an honor rightfully bestowed: Kimble's work has been exhibited internationally, and he has also made a name for himself in the decorative arts. Home furnishings such as rugs, dinnerware, and wallpaper now feature Kimble's unique folk-art designs, transforming the popular painter into a popular brand name. One distinguishing aspect of Kimble's art is his use of antique wood as a canvas. Utilizing acrylic and watercolor paints, he creates tranquil scenes that often depict the rural landscape of his home state of Vermont. In addition to painting landscapes, he also composes simplistic images of animals in his primitivistic folk-art style, and these images have also found their way into picture books such as The Cat's Meow and The Mare's Nest, the latter featuring a text by Gary Bowen. In School Library Journal, Mary Ann Carcich praised Kimble's "magnificent folkart animals and rural scenes" of mid-nineteenth-century Vermont, noting that they make the transition from antique wood to the smooth paper pages of The Mare's Nest with their "texture and rich, warm earth tones intact."

Kimble's self-illustrated children's book The Cat's Meow features one of the artist's most popular animal subjects—the cat—in twelve different paintings. Each of the dozen cats depicted in the book is identified according to its distinctive characteristic: Lazy Cat and Curious Cat are two of the twelve felines introduced in Kimble's simple text. Because the book contains a total of only twenty-two words, The Cat's Meow was recommended for use as "a vocabulary builder" by School Library Journal reviewer Angela J. Reynolds. In a review of the picture book for Kirkus Reviews, another critic

commented that, overall, the artist's "beautiful paintings and handsome design create an exquisite cattery battery that's pure delight."

Biographical and Critical Sources

PERIODICALS

Booklist, June 1, 2001, Gillian Engberg, review of The Mare's Nest, p. 1879.

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, July, 2001, review of The Mare's Nest, p. 403.

Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 2006, review of The Cat's Meow, p. 409.

Publishers Weekly, May 14, 2001, review of The Mare's Nest, p. 82.

School Library Journal, June, 2001, Mary Anne Carcich, review of The Mare's Nest, p. 102; April, 2006, Angela J. Reynolds, review of The Cat's Meow, p. 110.