Bio

RM Cimini is a painter based in Delaware, working in oil glazing over acrylic on canvas. Trained as a formalist, she now turns that structural discipline toward a different aim: paintings that invite viewers into a moment of interior stillness. Most works begin with an underpainting, built up through repeated layering, scraping, and re-layering, sometimes with raw pigment worked into the surface for texture. That process of addition and subtraction stays visible in the finished painting, inviting the eye to travel through the paint and find forms that are partly hidden.

Drawn to water and celestial skies, Cimini uses light as a visual metaphor for the fragility of form and our shared transitory state of being. A meditation practice spanning more than four decades informs both the paintings and how she hopes they're experienced. She also facilitates meditation groups and writes about art and spirituality for Huffington Post, Sivana Spirit, and her website, rmcimini.com.

Cimini's work has been featured in solo exhibitions at the McNichol Gallery at Neumann University in Aston, PA, and at baby grand Gallery at the Grand Opera House in Wilmington, DE, and in group exhibitions at The Delaware Contemporary, the Delaware Art Museum, the Belskie Museum in Closter, NJ, and the Monmouth Museum in Lincroft, NJ. She served on the board of Studio Montclair, a nonprofit visual arts organization, from 2013 to 2022, including as President from 2016 to 2019. She holds an MFA in painting and sculpture from Bennington College and is an inducted member of the National Association of Women Artists. Her work is held in private collections in the United States and abroad, and in the public collections of Atlantic Health System, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and the MC Hotel.

Statement

"As a painter with a long standing meditation practice, which has engendered an interest in consciousness and transformation, I derive great pleasure when I observe a person being moved deeply as they stand before one of my paintings. Drawing on beauty surrounding us in water and celestial skies, I use light as a visual metaphor to depict fragility of form and our shared transitory state of being

Connecting with viewers through our shared consciousness, the paintings open the door to a spiritual world; offer the viewer a sense of transcendence, a glimpse into an existence apart from everyday activities. Many paintings begun with a primary layer of gray toned hues are then . I then built through a process of layering semi-transparent color and scraping and layering again. Sometimes I add raw pigment to create a tactile surface.  The process of addition and subtraction is visible in the surface of the painting, and invites the viewer’s eye to travel around and through the paint, discovering hidden or obscured forms.  The radiant paintings depict the reality of a spiritual life embodying a belief in interconnectivity and mystery."