In the artist's words
I’m Kimberly June, a watercolor artist. My creative life began with music. I studied vocal performance in college and spent years at the piano and the flute, learning phrasing, dynamics, and the power of a well-placed rest. Later I worked as a graphic designer, a stage designer, and an interior designer, shaping how spaces and pages feel to the people inside them. After that, I spent years in tech, helping early-stage startups build their customer experience, train their teams, and grow. I loved the problem-solving and the people, and I moved fast.
Then a season of grief asked me to slow down.
In that quieter season, I picked up a brush. I wasn’t trying to make anything. I was trying to breathe. Watercolor turned out to be the right teacher. You can’t rush wet paper. Pigment moves on its own, pools where it wants to, dries in its own time. I learned to wait, to watch, and to let things take shape without forcing them. Somewhere in that patience, healing began.
Everything I learned before comes with me to the paper. I still think like a musician: in rhythm and rest, in soft passages and swells of color. I still compose like a designer, paying attention to space, balance, and what to leave out.
What emerged first were abstract landscapes. Land, water, and light, painted in soft layers: low hills, dark water, a line of gold where the horizon rests. That became my first collection, Land. Water. Light., made before there was a studio or a name for any of it. Then came Almond Blossoms, a small collection of florals painted slowly in loose water and gentle color. Alongside both is Grace Notes, a collection of tiny 3x3 originals, each paired with an envelope. In music, a grace note is a small ornamental note that adds beauty to the melody. These are made to be given, written in, and sent.
My palette comes from where I live: morning fog, linen, dusty rose, oak sage, bay blue, and the deep Payne’s grey of the hills at dusk. Much of my work is also shaped by faith. Many pieces begin with a verse I’ve been sitting with, about the deep, about rain on the mountains, about light shining out of darkness. I believe beauty points us back to the One who made it, and painting has become one of the ways I pray.
I’m also fascinated by why beauty does what it does to us. The growing field of neuroaesthetics studies how art, music, nature, and making things by hand calm the nervous system, restore attention, and help us feel whole. It gave words to something I’d already lived: slowing down and paying attention to beauty changes us.
That’s the heart of Kimberly June Studio. Alongside my paintings, I share the Linger & Savor practices, small offline rhythms that helped me heal. A walk without headphones. A meal cooked with nothing playing. A glass of wine held up to the light before the first sip. Each practice has two movements: linger, to slow down and notice, and savor, to take it in with all your senses.
I’m a wife, a mother of three, and a grandmother, and I’ve always been a gatherer of people. Some of my favorite moments happen around a table where no one wants to leave. In time, Linger & Savor will grow into small gatherings where these practices are shared in person, with good food, good wine, and real conversation.
Every piece I make is an original, signed and sent with a Certificate of Authenticity. I also paint custom pieces for people who want something made just for them.
My hope is simple. That something I’ve painted would find its way into your home and invite you to pause. To linger a little. To savor what’s already here.
Beautiful things happen slowly.
