Khalilah Birdsong (b. 1977, Cleveland, Ohio; raised in Atlanta, Georgia) is a visual artist known for her large-scale abstract paintings. She earned her Master of Fine Arts degree, with Honors, from Goldsmiths, University of London (England).
Birdsong’s work has been exhibited in galleries across the United States and internationally, including Atlanta, New York, Cincinnati, Hamburg, London, and Mallorca. Her solo and group exhibitions span the U.S., Japan, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Her paintings are held in private and corporate collections worldwide, including commissioned works and a piece in the private collection of President Barack Obama. She has also completed site-specific sculptural installations for corporate clients in Atlanta, Georgia, and Tokyo, Japan. In 2025, one of Birdsong’s paintings was acquired by the Kenkeleba House Museum (New York, New York).
Rooted in abstraction, Birdsong’s practice explores themes of survival and resurgence. Her process-led approach is marked by improvisation, spontaneity, and intuition. She layers and strips away paint to create richly textured surfaces—contusions, ridges, and moments of rawness that expose forgotten layers beneath. This tactile language is an invitation for viewers to engage emotionally and instinctively with the work.
Birdsong’s recent seven-year nomadic journey around the world deeply informed her creative process, instilling a disciplined and transformative perspective that continues to shape her artistic vision.
Her paintings evoke the scale and physical presence found in the work of Jack Whitten, Alfred Leslie, Joan Mitchell, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Ed Clark, and the later abstractions of Gerhard Richter. Like these artists, Birdsong achieves a compelling balance between physicality and precision.
In 2019, Contemporary Art Curator (London) named her among “100 Future Contemporary Artists.” That same year, she was invited to exhibit four large-scale paintings and a sculptural installation at the XII Florence Biennale in Florence, Italy. In 2020, she received a Hambidge Fellowship for the Creative Arts & Sciences. Birdsong currently lives and works in Atlanta, Georgia.
Statement
Khalilah Birdsong (American, b. 1977) is an artist based in Atlanta, Georgia. She explores survival and resurgence through abstraction and what is birthed from their tensions. Her process-led work in painting and sculpture is influenced by her own improvisation and spontaneity. Her investigations into the conceptualization of intuition in creativity is an invitation for the audience to surrender their experiences to the language of the work. She builds up layers of colors and then removes them. This process of layering and stripping builds contusions, bumps and raw ridges, but also reveals patches of older, more forgotten colors. Birdsong’s recent seven-year-long nomadic journey around the world has informed her practice by establishing a unique paradigm and disciplined approach which translates throughout her work.
Birdsong has exhibited with galleries in Atlanta, Georgia, Cincinnati, Ohio, New York, New York, Hamburg, Germany, Mallorca, Spain and London, England. She has had solo and group exhibitions in the United States, Japan, Italy, Spain and Great Britain. Khalilah's paintings are in private and corporate collections around the world, including commissioned works. Her installations have been commissioned by corporations in Atlanta, Georgia and Tokyo, Japan.
In 2019, Khalilah was named by Contemporary Art Curator (London, England) as “100 Future Contemporary Artists”. Birdsong was invited to participate in the XIIth Florence Biennale in Florence, Italy where she exhibited four large-scale paintings and a sculptural installation in 2019. In 2020, Khalilah was awarded a Hambidge Fellowship for the Creative Arts & Sciences. Birdsong earned a Masters of Fine Arts degree at Goldsmiths, University of London in 2024.