The Shapes of Earth series began in 2024, when Kice went to the Pike National Forest in Colorado for three weeks to “catch her breath” and stayed for two years. Experiencing and writing about delayed grief, she gave into the urge to place unstretched, raw canvases directly on the forest floor. With pastel, she worked in response to what was beneath them, allowing the contours, textures, pressure, and presence of the earth to shape the work.
As the process developed, some canvases were buried or left exposed to the environment for months. Back in the studio, she developed a process of preserving the canvases with thin layers of primer and paint. The resulting paintings are records of an encounter between the artist, the earth, and time.
The series has since expanded beyond the forest, following Kice into new landscapes and environments. Each painting explores landscape as both environment and threshold: the place where things take root, appear, disappear, and transform. The works hold the temporary alongside the urge to keep what is found and what is gone, with the canvas functioning as a membrane between the present and the past.
Through material and process, Shapes of Earth considers the ground itself as collaborator, subject, and keeper of the sacred.