Kim MacConnel

KIM MACCONNEL was an influential artist in the Pattern and Decoration Movement of the 1970s. Working with design elements, Kim MacConnel's paintings have made frivolity a fine art. Taking cues from Picasso and the so-called “primitivists,” MacConnel has taken the primitive and made it relevant in different dialogues between cultures. MacConnel’s paintings may look as though influenced by the Cubists, which they are, but there is a deeper meaning below the surface based in the materials he uses, and the meeting place he creates through cross-cultural interactions.

Kim MacConnel is an artist that has worked in San Diego for the past 30 years and has recently retired as a professor of art from UCSD. Although MacConnel is a seminal figure in the Pattern and Decoration movement of the seventies, overall MacConnel’s oeuvre has surpassed being categorized. His sensibility and talent has created a unique language using color and composition. He persuades the viewer to appreciate the appeal and conceptual property of patterns and draws inspiration from such wide-ranging and multicultural resources as the textile arts of numerous world regions, found graphic images, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso.