Making Happy Art

For the past year, I’ve been working diligently on a new body of whimsical acrylic trompe l’oeil paintings for an exhibition at Hidell Brooks Gallery in Charlotte, North Carolina. This includes eight cookie/gingerbread paintings (based on real-life models I bake and decorate) and one super-gigantic fudge ripple ice cream cone (the largest ice cream I’ve ever painted). While I’ll be writing more about the paintings all month and have a few blog posts up about the process and inspiration behind a few of them already, today we’re keeping it light: I’m simply going to show you the final photos of them.

I do hope you get a chance to see all of these works in person someday. They are really quite striking when you see them up close and in real life!

Thank you for all of the kindness and support so many of you have shown to me on social media, in emails and in thoughts. It means a lot for me to have had a chance to bring these works to life, and I hope they make the world seem just a little bit better than it was before they got here.

On with the show!

Related Posts:

• Why I Almost Didn’t Finish My Largest Painting Ever…A Five-Foot-Tall Fudge Ripple Ice Cream Cone
• Three Reasons I Wish You Could See My Paintings in Person and Not Online
• Three Videos of My Paintings that Recently Went Viral on TikTok
• Exploring the Details of the Trompe L’Oeil Painting “The Daydreamer”
• Painting “Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” Part 1: The Inspiration
• Painting “Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” Part 2: Baking and Decorating the Model
• Painting “Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” Part 3: The Process

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Kim Testone

Kim Testone is an acrylic still life and trompe l’oeil painter whose work focuses on whimsical food subjects. She is a former art magazine editor and holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Studio Art from the University of Central Florida and a Master’s Degree in Arts Administration from Savannah College of Art and Design. Her paintings are represented by Hidell Brooks Gallery in Charlotte, North Carolina. For more about her work, please visit https://kimtestone.com/.

Latest posts by Kim Testone (see all)

• Showing 40-Plus Years of My Art on Twitch Today: Proof that Artists Can Progress… – July 24, 2026
• We’re Going to Paint a Tiny Ice Cream Bar on Twitch Today – June 15, 2026
• We’re a Go for Twitch Painting Livestreams – June 12, 2026