finger painting is not just for kids

Artist Kimberly Adams finds joy and healing in her Bainbridge Island art studio

Words by Linda Kramer Jenning

Photo: Gage Brock

It might sound cliched to say an artist puts a lot of heart into her work, but for Kimberly Adams the heart is an essential element of her brightly colored shimmering paintings.

"I carve a heart in every one of my paintings, and that actually brings me a lot of joy," says Adams of the small hearts she hides within her pieces. "I love to sit back and watch people go up to my painting, and when they find the heart, they can't help but smile."

They also smile when they realize they are looking at a finger painting. Adams has taken what was once considered a child's messy pastime and elevated it to a technique she uses to create exquisite works.

"People have been painting with their fingers a lot longer than they probably have with brushes. I find I have more control to use my fingers than I do with my brushes," says Adams, who switched from brushes to fingertips in 2014. "You can move things and push the paint around. It is the texture that I have fun with."

Her tubes of paint and the gloves she wears to manipulate the goo are neatly organized in her Bainbridge Island studio. Adams says she only enters it to paint when she is in the right frame of mind, a happy place. She wants each painting with its hidden heart to radiate good vibes, and she's determined that the inoperable brain tumor lurking in her head not derail the joy she brings to her art and life.

The tumor was discovered four years ago. Although benign, only a small part could be removed due to its location. After surgery and fighting her way back from multiple impairments, Adams is adamant that she doesn't want to be known as "brain tumor Kimberly."

"I wouldn't be honest with you if I said I didn't have sadness, but it's where I chose to put that energy," says Adams, 52, while sipping a masala chai in her living room overlooking Rich Passage. "I could spend all day being sad about whatever's happening to me, or I could try to turn that upside down and find something to be happy about. There's something about me painting in my studio that just makes me feel good. It's magical."

Meandering paths are a motif in Kimberly Adam's paintings, including this piece, entitled Whispers of Autumn Air. “It kind of speaks to her personal journey and other people she brings along,” says Adams’ husband Robert Tremper. (Photo: Emily Barrows)

Her journey as an artist began in her hometown of Farmington, New Mexico, where she studied with a local artist. She took more art classes in college and added a business major to make sure she would be able to support herself. After graduating, Adams worked in retail as a district manager in the high end fashion sector. ("When you love clothing and you love shoes, it was perfect," she says).

She had little time for her art between her high pressure career and raising two sons. When the boys were grown and out of the house, she decided to see if she could make it as a full-time artist. She approached it like a job, figuring how many paintings she would need to sell combined with other revenue streams like teaching, print making and writing books.

She connected with Parklane, an art gallery in Kirkland where she served on the board of directors and still shows her work. Other galleries began to accept her work including the Cole Gallery in Edmonds and ones in Jackson Hole and Big Sky.

"When I saw Kimberly's paintings, they were fun, whimsical, powerful and expressive," says Denise Cole who added Adams to her gallery in 2015 and plans another show of her work this October. "Kimberly is one of the most generous, humble artists that I know. It really fits her personality that she would do something like the hearts. People connect with her paintings, and it means something to them emotionally."

Adams favors vibrant colors like the ones in this piece, entitled Amber Woods. “Even on a dreary day, you can look at one of her paintings and there’s brightness and excitement,” says Tremper. (Photo: Emily Barrows)

After about six years of what Adams calls "living the life of an artist," she became interested in writing a book about how to combine a career with creative outlets like painting. To make her point, she went back to work full time in corporate retail.

"I would get up and write for a couple of hours, shower, go to work my eight-hour shift, drive home and charge my creative batteries. I'd get in my studio and paint, and it just flew out of me," says Adams. "I had this flow that was phenomenal."

But in the spring of 2022 she began to feel more fatigued than usual and had other minor symptoms she shrugged off. That May she became dizzy and had trouble articulating words while giving a presentation she had given many times before. She went to the emergency room and scans revealed the mass in her head.

"I had a golf ball sized tumor on my brainstem," says Adams. After consultations and more work ups, she had surgery in August 2022. Surgeons removed about 20 percent of the mass, but had to leave the rest inside her head. "They relieved the pressure it was putting on my brainstem, but all my crucial nerves are inside it so they can't remove it. I was very fortunate that mine was not cancer, but it was just in a very tricky area. The good news is I could go the whole rest of my life and it won't grow."

"When she came out of surgery, she couldn't speak, she couldn't walk, she couldn't see," recalls Robert Tremper, her husband. "Our first year of recovery was really just about healing."

She had a feeding tube, a patch on one eye and needed a walker when she returned home to Bainbridge from the hospital. She also had some facial paralysis and double vision. It took multiple therapies and hard work to recover some of her impaired functions.

To help with hand-eye coordination, Adams returned to her studio. She practiced first with watercolors and then moved on to oils, at the time still wearing an eye patch to help with the double vision. Her ongoing impairments ruled out a return to the corporate world, but she started a blog to share her tumor journey with others who might be going through similar challenges and she started to teach again.

Photo: Inese Wescott

"She's an amazing teacher," says Becky Breeze, who first took classes with Adams nearly a decade ago. "She makes you feel good about everything you produce."

Breeze visited Adams on Bainbridge when she still had the eye patch, walker, and feeding tube. They were sitting in the garden and Breeze recalls, "She laughed and said, 'I'm having lunch outside today.' She had this bag of food going into her stomach. Her attitude has always been happy and positive and looking for joy in everything she does, even that whole process."

Breeze, who lives on Whidbey Island, had never considered finger painting until she started studying with Adams. "It lets you really just get into your creative self without any rules, and you can't make any mistakes. If you don't like something, you paint over the top of it or scrape it off or add more. With finger painting, you're right on the canvas, It's like being a child getting to smear paint."

After Adams started finger painting again, she couldn't stay at her easel for long stretches because her eyes watered and she fatigued more easily. She began to paint faster, and her style became less realistic and more impressionistic.

"I have to learn how to adjust based on the limitations that I have," says Adams. "I'm on this path to rewire my brain."

Kaleidoscope II‍ After surgery to remove a brain tumor, Adams couldn’t stay at her easel for long stretches. She began to paint faster, and her style became more impressionistic. (Photo: Emily Barrows)

Tremper says many of his wife's landscapes include a path. "It kind of speaks to her personal journey, and other people she brings along. Even on a dreary day, you can look at one of her paintings and there's some brightness and some excitement. It's just the connection and light heartedness and colors that she uses gives you a sense of light and peace."

Only a few of her paintings hang in their Bainbridge home, usually just until they dry and go off to what she calls their "forever homes." They share space on walls and shelves with an eclectic collection of art and objects that Adams and Tremper have gathered over the years. There are paintings by artists they admire along with mementoes of travels and gifts from Mother Nature like the limb from a Madrona tree that hangs like a Calder sculpture suspended from the ceiling.

"For us it's like walking through a gallery in time," says Tremper. "We are surrounding ourselves with items from trips and from friends and family and our adventures."

Tremper says they enjoy inviting friends over to stroll through the art-filled home and see some of his wife's latest paintings. "She puts a ton of emotion and love and happiness into every one of her pieces, and it makes me proud of what she's accomplished and what she's overcome. I think people feel an emotional connection, a sense of calm and positivity and strength. On a good day she wants to be in the studio and painting. It takes her a lot longer than it used to. She paints when she feels her best and that's translated to the canvas."

Adams says she has her hiccups, days when she's not at her best, and she has the ongoing challenges of being deaf in one ear and stumbling occasionally over words.

"That's why I'm very passionate about rewiring," she says. "I didn't realize what strength art has in healing until I had to go through my personal journey. My art helped me get back to doing a lot of things I did before and it continues to. I think if my art wasn't there, I don't think I would be where I am today."

Scenes from Adam's enchanting art studio steps from Puget Sound on Bainbridge Island. (Photos: Emily Barrows)