Lucky Days

Meet the Heart-ist

Kim Bennett Porter is a painter and collage artist based in Boise, Idaho. Working from her studio in Garden City’s creative district, she creates art deeply tied to personal experiences, environmental rhythms and imagination. Raised in a ranching family of homesteaders and Basque sheepherders, Kim grew up surrounded by high desert landscapes, weather-worn wood, rusted machinery and immigrant histories. She found that stories were embedded in walls of peeling layers of worn paint, decorative papers, newspaper clippings and daguerreotype photos of distant people and place. These elements influenced her understanding of how time and memory are embedded in physical spaces and nature. In her formative adult years, Kim lived in Madrid, Tokyo, Paris, and Conakry which expanded her pallet, introducing urban textures—gritty, worn surfaces that tell global stories of human migration.

Kim’s paintings start with underlayers built up like a sculptural relief using paper, glass bead, sand, and ceramic stucco. These layers are then painted in varying thicknesses, sanded down, and re-painted repeatedly until the interplay between intentional brushstrokes and the unpredictable results of distressing reveal the desired textural qualities. By emphasizing these details, Kim invites viewers to experience the beauty found in revolutions of rebirth and decay, giving the sense that her pieces not only depict but have also been through life cycles of their own.