Kim MacConnel

Born in Oklahoma City in 1946, Kim MacConnel is an American artist who is best known for his pattern designs painted on furniture (or 3 dimensional canvases as he refers to it).

MacConnel was a creative force in the Pattern and Decoration movement that had its heyday in the 1970’s. His work would later come to defy categorization altogether. It was difficult for artists like him to be taken seriously at a time when minimalism was getting most of the attention and many of them weren’t interested in things like color or even painting for that matter. Another reason it was difficult for him to be taken seriously as an artist is because instead of painting on canvas, he chose to use furniture as his medium or strips of fabric that were allowed to hand freely instead of being stretched across a wooden frame.

Artists have been painting on stretched canvases for hundreds of years. It wasn’t until the height of the minimalist’s movement while critics were claiming that painting has run its course that MacConnel came along and added a whole new dimension to painting. MacConnel’s furniture is a 3-D painting that can be used to decorate a functional space, closing the gap between art and life.