Kimberley Bright
Kimberley Bright is a queer, neurodivergent artist living and working in Glasgow, a city made by the people who inhabit it and, according to its 1990s tagline, one that smiles better. She is on a personal mission to smile better too.
She is the daughter of a man who makes a living scribbling cartoon superheroes and a mother who can’t sit still. Somewhere between the two, she became an artist who is essentially two magpies (because two’s for joy), endlessly distracted by shiny things that spark delight.
She has a paintbrush tattooed on the middle finger of her left hand, but she uses actual brushes to make the work. She loves playing with colour and the endless possibilities that buttery oil paint allows.
After art school, she accidentally became a graphic designer. Although graphic design definitely isn’t her passion, its logic has crept into her paintings. She is drawn to humour, pattern, lists, visual noise, other people’s trash, and the quiet absurdity of everyday life. She loves collecting and arranging things, making collages, and chasing the small thrill of finding something unexpectedly perfect.
That thrill might come from a hidden treasure at a car boot sale, the patterns on the box your granny kept her binoculars in, a stranger’s three-star Amazon review of a potato peeler, or a laminated notice that really didn’t need to be laminated.
Her work often reveals itself as images rather than finished paintings, hovering somewhere between her head and her heart. Through improvisation and play, she pulls these images into focus, letting ideas collide, bend, and misbehave. The result is bold, figurative paintings with a pop sensibility, where things feel slightly off, humorous, and surreal. Her work invites people to smile better, recognise something familiar, and leave with something small, odd, and hard to place.
