Having trained in fine art and anthropology, it was inevitable that Kimberly Reed-Deemer would eventually settle in the cultural crossroads of the Southwest. Like many artists past and present who have made the Southwest their subject, she was taken by the region’s unique light quality and rich cultural diversity, but what sets Reed-Deemer’s paintings apart is that her subjects are the real people of today. Reed-Deemer paints people she has actually seen performing, or encountered out and about over the 20 years she has been living in the Southwest, and she paints them with her own honest vision, and in her own distinctive style. While Reed-Deemer enjoys the historical colony artists of the past, the focus of her work, the contemporary inhabitants of the region, are as worthy as their predecessors of 100 years ago, and she is one of very few Southwestern/Western artists capturing contemporary life in this vibrant part of the country, and doing so in a way that is truly her own.