Kristin Calabrese: Painting as a Dance Through Existence

Art as Necessity, Not Choice

"It’s easy for me to forget after so many years how there was never any choice for me." – Kristin Calabrese

For Los Angeles-based painter Kristin Calabrese, art is not simply a pursuit, it is an inevitable, necessary act of existence. In her words, she sought a way to mark time beyond the conventional roles of living, working, and childbearing. Art became a manifestation of energy, an abstract yet tactile expression of raw feeling, something with friction, magnetism, and grit.

Rather than constructing ideas first and executing them later, Calabrese moves instinctively through her work, following an intuitive process that allows the unexpected to emerge. She resists over-controlling her own creations, pursuing authenticity, unpredictability, and freedom in her artistic practice.

Painting as Truth, Conflict, and Perception

"My realistic oil paintings tell the truth when I can't."

Calabrese’s paintings confront personal and societal conflicts, navigating the space between how things should be and how they seem to be. With a distinct realistic style, her work presents life-sized depictions of objects and spaces that interact with physical reality, challenging notions of illusion versus truth.

Her paintings explore themes of:

The meaning of life

Family relationships

Social injustice

The need for safety

The deliberate lack of expressionistic brushstrokes and the use of bright, even lighting contribute to an atmosphere where clarity and deception coexist.

A Career Built on Vision

Born in San Francisco in 1968, Calabrese received her MFA from UCLA and her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Her work has been exhibited at prestigious institutions, including:

Gagosian

Saatchi Gallery

Hammer Museum

Seattle Art Museum

ICA

Orange County Museum of Art

Her work sits at the intersection of form, perception, and philosophy, a practice that embraces both transcendence and obliteration, manifestation and disappearance, a dance through the air, euphoric and fleeting.