ARTIST BIO

Kymberlee Stanley was born and raised in Southern California and comes from a family of three generations raised near the California coast.  Throughout her life, Laguna Beach’s rocky coastline and eucalyptus-lined canyon roads have been her muse, and the color of the coast has been her palette. She is known for her “alla prima” painting style with bold, direct brushwork that depict scenes of serenity, reflection, and comfort.

Kymberlee’s first exposure to oil painting was a class her mother enrolled her in at the age of 16 at a local hardware store. In high school she excelled in art and won local awards for paintings. She later received an art scholarship to attend Biola University, near Los Angeles, which was granted to her due to an oil painting she painted at the hardware store class. Kymberlee was an art major at Biola her freshman year and later graduated from California State University Long Beach with a degree in Liberal Arts with an Art Concentration in art education. She worked as an elementary school teacher for ten years and later graduated with a MSW in Social Work from the University of Southern California. Since 2004 she has worked as a school social worker and psychotherapist in California and Tennessee. 

Throughout of her life, Kymberlee has pursued a lifetime of artistic endeavors as a singer songwriter, guitar player, modern dancer and choreographer, but didn’t pursue painting again until moving  to Nashville in 2013.  The same box of oil paints that Kymberlee used in her hardware store painting class remained unused until she was 46 years old; but due to her homesickness for the California coast, she took a local oil painting class and started painting scenes of Laguna Beach to fill her Nashville home. This art class later led to an art curator inviting her to do a solo exhibition of 15 paintings in one year. Kymberlee accepted the challenge and had her first one person show in 2015 where she sold over half her paintings and was encouraged by the response to her work. Two years later she and her husband built an art studio in her backyard where she started painting avidly and teaching art classes.  Kymberlee continues to pursue mentorships and oil painting workshops regularly with OPA artists such as Lori Putnam, Marcie Hicks, Dawn Whitelaw, and Ann Blair Brown.  

Kymberlee enjoys exhibiting with the Southern California Plein Air Association, Oceanside Museum of Art, Nashville’s Plein Air Chestnut Group, Catalina Island Art Festivals, and has recently won the Betty Schmidt Memorial Scholarship Award through the Oil Painters of America. In 2022, she was a founding member of the West Nashville Art Crawl, and was highlighted in the Nashville Scene as an Emerging Artist In 2024. In 2024 she founded the Nashville Painters Salon with 11 professional members regularly attending studio critiques and classes. She is passionate about using expressive arts in her psychotherapy private practice, and helping people find their passions through art. She currently lives in Nashville, Tennessee with her husband, daughter and favorite dog model, Zoey.