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Kim Tateo

Kim Tateo is an interdisciplinary artist, musician, and educator in Troy, NY. She is also the Executive Director and Farm Manager of Friends of Tivoli Lake Preserve and Farm, where she encourages people to connect with the land and each other through the garden and green spaces. Tateo was born in 1984 in Seoul, South Korea. She was adopted when she was three months old and grew up in Iowa, appreciating open spaces and sunsets. She received a BA in Music from the University of Iowa. After college, she relocated to New York City, where she resided for nearly ten years. She loved exploring and collecting stories. She now lives in upstate NY and still appreciates sunsets, but also loves adventuring to the Adirondacks and finding magic in the everyday.Her paintings are capsules of self-expression translating into dreamy landscapes and whimsical worlds filled with color, creatures, and tiny details. She believes in a world of interconnectedness ~ that our hearts are tied to some incredibly beautiful thread that connects us all. She paints the scenes that the beings of our dreams see, full of reminders of beauty, love, and places where kindness doesn’t matter; it just is.She loves using bold colors, glitter, broken glass, gems, gold leaf, and iridescent paints. She uses blacklight responsive paints to reveal a hidden layer that is meant to be a reminder of the unseen things that are always surrounding us.Tateo creates experiences for artists to connect and collaborate through collaborative painting and her “Snail Mail Art Collaboration,” a project with artists worldwide exploring impermanence through art and snail mail. She writes songs with her project, Sparkle Garden. She has participated in various exhibitions, art fairs, shows, and public art projects in New York City, Los Angeles, and the Capital Region. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Music from the University of Iowa and is an MFA Candidate from the University of Albany 2025.When she is not painting, she is singing or shepherding a flock of sheep (sometimes both simultaneously), and her work is greatly influenced by her time with plants and animals.With that, she invites you to dive in, take a moment, escape into imagination, and “look a little closer.”

I am an interdisciplinary artist interested in exploring interconnectedness to ourselves, our environment, and the universe. I came into this world untethered. My work moves between releasing feelings into abstract expressions and creating magical worlds meant to be the unseen spaces where all hearts are connected. These landscapes are meant to evoke a sense of dreaming, playfulness, and peace and gently pull on the heartstrings of whimsy in all beings. I use bright colors, glitter, and blacklight-responsive paint as an interactive way to reveal a hidden layer to remind us of the magic that is constantly surrounding us. I often start a painting based on a feeling or a need to "move through something"; I'm never entirely sure where it will go. I move in between painting very detailed worlds and abstract landscapes. Painting very detailed worlds becomes a meditation and a place to place my feelings on death and the afterlife. By creating utopias and fairylands, I can be present with all that is, including our inevitable losses. While I am interested in Tibetan Buddhism and mindfulness practices, the worlds created do not belong to any hierarchy or religion. Instead, they are meant to encourage the viewer to embrace the mystery of the unknown. In a way, my art is my activism in response to the world. The process itself is very healing, and while a painting may not explicitly depict hard feelings, it is because the work itself is layered with many feelings ~ as life is many opposing feelings at one time. Creating is my way of moving through it ~ emptying a long day and challenging conversations, finding equanimity, accepting impermanence, finding inner iridescence, and radiating joy. These little worlds are ponderings, meditations, spells, prayers, dreams remembered, portals to the abundant landscapes where I believe our souls reside.May they be transportive and remind you of your inner longings. May they be one of the pathways to remembering. To imagination. An invitation to commune with something divine (which I believe we all are) and something magical.

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Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius enim in eros elementum tristique. Duis cursus, mi quis viverra ornare, eros dolor interdum nulla, ut commodo diam libero vitae erat. Aenean faucibus nibh et justo cursus id rutrum lorem imperdiet. Nunc ut sem vitae risus tristique posuere.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius enim in eros elementum tristique. Duis cursus, mi quis viverra ornare, eros dolor interdum nulla, ut commodo diam libero vitae erat. Aenean faucibus nibh et justo cursus id rutrum lorem imperdiet. Nunc ut sem vitae risus tristique posuere.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius enim in eros elementum tristique. Duis cursus, mi quis viverra ornare, eros dolor interdum nulla, ut commodo diam libero vitae erat. Aenean faucibus nibh et justo cursus id rutrum lorem imperdiet. Nunc ut sem vitae risus tristique posuere.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius enim in eros elementum tristique. Duis cursus, mi quis viverra ornare, eros dolor interdum nulla, ut commodo diam libero vitae erat. Aenean faucibus nibh et justo cursus id rutrum lorem imperdiet. Nunc ut sem vitae risus tristique posuere.

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