Born 1981. Kim O’Neil is an artist and a not so distant relation of John F Kennedy. Lives and works in Kent, UK. Kim is an artist, educator and paint technologist.
Kim graduated from Central Saint Martins with a BA Hons Fine Art. Her notable tutors included Paul Eachus, Bill Henderson and Nooshin Farnid. She has exhibited in group shows, including exhibiting alongside Maggie Hamblin, Paula Rego and Annie Kevans. Her work has sold to many private collections including Justin King of Sainsburys supermarkets and Robinson of Jigsaw. Kim has had several large solo shows in Central London. Her entire debut show collection was sold before the private view in 2006. As her popularity increased, she took on commissions for The Athenaeum Hotel in Mayfair, Earls Court and Olympia. During this busy period Kim staged her second solo show in London’s Vyner Street, entitled ‘Till death us do part’, in 2007/8. This was Kim’s take on the “commentary of marriage and the breakdown of structure in society”. The signature piece, an 8ft by 6ft painted marriage certificate, was the talking point of the exhibition. Kim staged a group project in 2008/9 with artist Nicola Morrison in the Nicholls and Clarke building in Shoreditch High Street. Her work, possibly the most disturbing and explicit so far, featured fragments of death certificates of Jack the Ripper’s victims and was made in response to the Ipswich prostitute murders that year. 2010 saw Kim provide a piece for Tamsyn Challenger’s collective project, ‘400 women’ which featured portraits and memorials of murder victims from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. This exhibition has toured extensively and drawn critical acclaim. . 'Sins' shown in Vyner Street in 2012, a modern incarnations of the Seven Deadly Sins are depicted through painted fragments of mundane ephemera.
.
Kim has 19 years’ experience as an educator, initially teaching A level Art before establishing her own independent art school ‘Paint Modern,’ based in Surrey. In more recent years she has specialised in teaching abstract painting and drawing at the newest incarnation of her private art school 'Paint Abstract'. Kim offers online classes in cutting edge abstract art.
Paint technologist and ambassador for Winsor & Newton and Liquitex since 2008, Kim has lectured and demonstrated on their behalf, so has expert knowledge of their products and their full potential. She has run workshops at London Graphic Centre, Great Art, Cass Art, and Jacksons in association with these brands, to name just a few. She has also lectured at Central Saint Martins UAL in partnership with Winsor & Newton. Art writing has also been another facet of Kim’s career and published work for Liquitex, Winsor and Newton, Ken Bromley, and London Graphic Centre’s blog.
Since March 2017 Kim has taken an artistic change of direction and is working on a new body of work for two shows. 'Temples' a series of re-worked medical diagrams and a body of visceral and textural abstract paintings in response to different enviroments.