Artist's Menu

Biography - Jaime Lee Kirchner

 

Dear Reader,

My name is Jaime. I was born in Nuremburg Germany with my umbilical cord wrapped around my neck. This was a clear message from the universe that, in my little life, there would be a few 'hang ups’ so to speak.

I’ve navigated the worst of these hang-ups by escaping into magical worlds without rules through any form of 'art' I could get my hands on. Painting, drawing, poetry, tap dance, singing, music, movie musicals, all things graced by Vivian Leigh and all things imaged by J.R.R. Tolkien.

I was always moved by the mystical and mysterious, the dark side of things, emotional things, the truth ... usually the ugly truth. As a child my natural connection to the metaphysical world and enchanted possibilities was considered "crazy" or stupid. I observed with great sadness and confusion that most people chose instead to cling to a life of fear, formula, and mediocrity. I was lucky enough to find an outlet for my spritited side through performing at the Roxy Theater in Clarksville Tennessee where I grew up. Acting would become my main focus and my profession as well as a great compromise. An outlet where I could express my truer self, as well as a vocation acceptable enough in a ridged, disenchanted world. I hid my artwork not out of shyness but out of wanting to protect its sacredness. It was in my artwork that I was able to be truly free to wander through my emotions and commune with all the unseen forces of light and relate to something bigger than myself. 

I fell deeply in love with the musical RENT. At 16 I saw the original cast perform on Broadway. Growing up bi-racial in Tennessee, I had never really seen anything as dynamic, raw, real, and fearless as RENT. I knew I had to be apart of that raw power one day. Ten years later, at 25, I realized my dream and made my Broadway debut as MIMI. The show inspired over 12 years of my life, where I went to college (NYU), and how I wanted to show up in the world; in love, not fear. Mimi sings the words “There’s only now, there’s only here, give into love, or live in fear, no other path, no other way, no day but today”. The sentiment of living for today and living in love became a mantra I followed for years until the show ended I was left to make my own way.
 
I have spent my whole life performing, professionally doing commercials and banal TV work, occasionally finding outlets for true integrity and creativity but usually not, all the while painting privately, communing in secret with angels, and spirits and nether realms, searching for permission to release my images out into the world. After many attempts and a lot of passive aggressive praying, I have discovered there is no one or thing that grants this permission. One must walk out onto the wire of freedom for one’s self and dare to dance untethered like the wind. One must choose to erupt in the sky like a star, a blazing fireball of life force energy suspended in man’s eye as only a dot, a twinkle to wish on, but compelled and burning all the same.   

I present my visual works of “art” here for the first time. They are extensions of my musings with light and love and pain. They are the remains of memories of my childhood and sketches of distant dreams. At my best, I commune with God, or Love or infinite possibility, however you like to name the magic that creates worlds, and a picture comes through. My brush and my hands get to tango and dance and wrestle with it into a painting, of which hopefully inspires the viewer to remember their own connection to unexplored worlds without and within. Lastly, I leave you with this to ponder from the truest of dreamers ...

" Would you like an adventure now, or would you like to have tea first?" ...J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan