Karen was born in Philadelphia PA, and began to explore her passion for artmaking at the age of twelve, using how-to books and making careful pencil drawings from images in various print media. As a teen, she sketched the foliage at the side of her family’s summer vacation cottage and discovered that she could move her pencil with an energy that seemed to come from the foliage itself and travel through her hand and pencil. The resulting drawing was rough-looking, scratchy, erratic, and she loved it. It was the beginning of a personal discovery of her power.
Her studies for her BA from Kutztown College PA, as an English major, distracted her from visual art for a period as she focused on her other love, writing and poetry. After graduation, as she moved around New England, she continued her study of visual art, taking classes independently in painting, drawing, calligraphy, wood-block printing, from art teachers in Cambridge, Northampton, and Amherst MA; Manchester VT; Santa Cruz CA. In the ensuing years, she experienced an extended period of struggle to develop her personal art while employed as a graphic designer in the advertising and print industry. Graphic design, while absorbing much of her creative energy for those years, advanced and refined her ability to see – to work with space, color, relationship, detail. A key moment for her during those years was a vacation trip to the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, observing in-person some of the large abstract works from mid-20th century painters . . . huge, direct, heart-poundingly impressive, calling her back to her discoveries as a teen with her pencil.
Following this period, an 8-year stint as co-owner, and then owner, of Papyri Books (a mostly-used bookstore) in North Adams MA, engulfed her in the world of business operation for a time. While leaving her with precious little time and energy to paint during those years, she experienced the thrill of creating an art environment in the shop, offering the walls for local artist exhibits, hosting poetry readings, inviting local musicians for evenings of music, enhancing the children’s area with a colorful painting of her own, and designing flyers and posters for the various events at the shop. After the sale of the store, she moved quickly into again creating her own work for exhibit. She currently, in her home in Williamstown MA, spends much of her time secluded in her attic studio space, dividing her creative energy between writing and painting.
Karen’s development as an artist over the years has evolved as a complex conversation between her emotional relationship with color and paint and her love of line and movement, in response to her environment both visual and emotional.
StateMA
