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Kirsten Rae Simonsen

@behomebeforedark

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Psychedelic Beatrix Potter 🐇
Artist ~ drawing / watercolor
Lecturer Drawing / Painting @uhmanoa_art
Nobody is free until everybody is free

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Detail of work in progress #painting #wip #workinprogress by @behomebeforedark

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a year ago

The opening is Saturday, please come! I’m excited to be part of Curator’s Choice at the Hō‘ikeākea Gallery at Leeward! @katherineloveart curated my work. Here’s the info:

Exhibition Opening Reception:
5:00 - 8:00 PM
Saturday, December 6, 2025 @hoikeakeagallery Leeward Community College

These works were started in Ireland three years ago and they have been back-and-forth to Ireland three times. I’m really excited about this series. This particular detail is from a painting called Welcome to the Pleasure Dome. Believe it or not, all of these paintings are about sexual aggression and assault. Rabbits are prey. They are based on my experiences being a young woman living in Amsterdam, London, & beyond in the 90s. I hope the animals in my paintings look extremely skeptical as they are surrounded by beautiful and seductive flowers and plants that threaten to swallow them up. I also have included many hallucinogenic and poisonous plants and flowers.

Here’s what it’s all about: Listening to the accounts from the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell has brought up a lot of memories for me. So many times in the 90s I was in beautiful and seductive surroundings, like a gorgeous nightclub, a trippy outdoor festival, or posh townhouse, but I didn’t realize that I was also often surrounded by danger in one form or another. I even had a similar experience to some of the survivors, not of being trafficked, but of being lured into various disturbing and sexually aggressive situations. Epstein and Maxwell played the long game; they would string young and ambitious artists, models, actresses, etc. along for months, without trying anything on them. So in many cases, the women or girls didn’t suspect that anything creepy would happen until they finally ended up alone in a room with those two. The same thing happened to me, more than once. And to a lot of other women (and even more unfortunately, girls), too.

To see the paintings and hear more detail, you’ll have to come see the opening! Thank you to @ejeancarroll1 for encouraging this open discussion. #metoo #youtoo #ejeancarroll #epstein #hoikeakeagallery #honoluluart #honoluluartists #pauloakenfold #the90s by @behomebeforedark

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10 months ago

This guy…rabbit selfie 🐇🌸 #watercolor #painting #whiterabbit #rabbit #drawing by @behomebeforedark

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5 months ago

This painting is currently part of the Grief exhibition at @ghostgallery in Seattle.

The Reckoning
Graphite, watercolor, and acrylic on paper
11 x 15 in

This is one of three paintings in the exhibition, they are all for sale at the link in bio.

Ghost Gallery
600 Pine St, Level 2

Fall Hours
Wed-Sat 12-8pm
Sun 12-6pm taken in Ghost Gallery by @behomebeforedark

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5 days ago

This painting, The Descent, is currently in the Grief exhibition at @ghostgallery in Seattle. It is dedicated to my best friend from high school, who left this earth in December 2018. We met in the 5th grade in a class for students interested in making art and writing. Her nickname for me was "Bird." I knew the depths that she could sink to about the state of the natural world; she felt a deep despair about the way so many humans seem so disconnected from nature, and she knew I felt the same. Before she chose to take her own life, I envisioned her as lost in what seemed to her an increasingly artificial and unnatural world.

The Descent
Graphite, watercolor, and acrylic on paper
11 x 15 in

This is one of three paintings in the exhibition, they are all for sale in the link below in the comments. If you live in Seattle, stop by!

Curator’s note: “Grief presents itself to us in endless forms and is triggered by countless events throughout our lives….For this exhibition we’re showcasing work that explores how the artist has faced and/or is facing grief in whatever form it has come to them. Art is both acceptance and resistance, and a powerful tool for communication with one another in order to heal, understand, unlearn or relearn...let this exhibition be just one vibrant space in the amorphousness of grief’s existence. We are stronger through it.”

Ghost Gallery
600 Pine St, Level 2
Fall Hours
Wed-Sat 12-8pm
Sun 12-6pm

#ghostgallery #ghostgalleryseattle #seattleart #grief by @behomebeforedark

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12 days ago

I’m so honored to be included in this exhibition at Ghost Gallery (@ghostgallery) in Seattle, opening tomorrow, Friday, September 11 from 5 to 9 PM. Details below. This is a detail of one of the works, The Descent, about the death of one of my closest friends from the early decades of my life, a complicated and beautiful person who I will forever miss. The exhibition is live online already, linked in comments. if you live in Seattle, stop by. I love @ghostgallery.

Curator’s note: “Grief presents itself to us in endless forms and is triggered by countless events throughout our lives….For this exhibition we’re showcasing work that explores how the artist has faced and/or is facing grief in whatever form it has come to them. Art is both acceptance and resistance, and a powerful tool for communication with one another in order to heal, understand, unlearn or relearn...let this exhibition be just one vibrant space in the amorphousness of grief’s existence. We are stronger through it.”

Ghost Gallery
600 Pine St, Level 2
Fall Hours
Wed-Sat 12-8pm
Sun 12-6pm

#ghostgallery #ghostgalleryseattle #seattleart #grief #loss taken in Ghost Gallery by @behomebeforedark

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19 days ago

This artwork, Queen of the Night, is part of the Midwest Nice (@midwestniceart) exhibition called “i can’t get at the poem of this.” It is juried by Angela Zonunpari. The exhibition explores the story or stories that drives an artwork.

Here’s the story behind this painting:

The plants above the two rabbits are datura. The datura flower, or “devil’s trumpet” or “devil’s breath,” has been used in traditional medicine, sometimes as a sacred hallucinogen. All parts of the plant are toxic and it can cause hallucinations, delirium, and disorientation that lasts for weeks. At higher doses, it can be fatal. In the Epstein files, emails to Epstein allegedly suggest that Epstein may have been growing this plant or was considering growing it. It appears to have been recommended to Epstein because it causes loss of memory & can “remove free will,” as one email says. Some victims and perpetrators have suggested that he was already intentionally growing it on the island. I included poisonous plants in these works intentionally.

View the show at the link in my bio.

#contemporaryart #artexhibition #midwestniceart #midwestnice #storytelling by @behomebeforedark

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22 days ago

Found out this sold at the @atelier.ghostbirds auction in Portugal, so glad!

Nuclear Test: Bikini Atoll
Ink on paper
2023
7 x 5 in.
(from the Wish You Were Here postcard series)

#watercolor #ink #painting #inkwash #nuclear by @behomebeforedark

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a month ago

Happy 20th Anniversary (!) to my one true love, Scott (@elasticlimit). Here’s to many, many more! 💗💕 by @behomebeforedark

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a month ago

The Last Resort
Ink on Paper
5 x 7 in

#drawing #painting #ink #inkwash #theeagles by @behomebeforedark

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a month ago

Long Road Out of Eden
Watercolor on paper
6.75 x 4.75 in

#painting #watercolorpainting #watercolor #watercolors #theeagles by @behomebeforedark

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a month ago

Pink Champagne on Ice 🥂
Watercolor on paper
6.75 x 4.75 in

#painting #watercolorpainting #watercolor #watercolors #theeagles by @behomebeforedark

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a month ago