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Biography
Born in Reigate, Surrey January 1962.
Karen worked with her father as a sign painter and commercial artist producing bespoke signs and pictorial art in the traditional way until 2011 when she moved to Wiltshire to paint full time.
Wiltshire, with its open chalk hills and wide valleys covered with hardy grasslands, provided the unique landscape that inspired her. The occasional tree dotted on the horizon accentuates the clean line between the earth and the sky. The feeling of freedom and being on top of the world was her inspiration.
Acrylic paint is her chosen medium usually with a limited palette to keep the paintings fresh. Mark making with large flat brushes giving a painterly and loose feel.
Karen has been on a journey to abstraction. Her paintings have developed from figurative through to semi abstract and total abstraction. Starting with gestural marking then layering the paint, concentrating on balancing tonal value with colour harmony, She develops the works until she has achieved the desired outcome.
Artist Statement
Until 2019, my work was representational landscape painting with a focus on textures and colours. I intended to express the feel of the landscape, the way it forms itself from the ground, to push that contrast between the land and the sky. The colours were taken to their limits, highlighted by spots of pink and blue in response to the reflections of the sky and other objects against each other. I enhanced the textures in the foreground with impasto to create the feel of the freshly cut straw in the field under foot, for example.
​I think of my artworks, past and present, as an unfinished diary of my personal reaction to the landscape around me. Moving gradually from representation to abstraction, the shapes and colours I once painted as I saw them are now painted as I feel them.
​I mark the canvas with charcoal then layer and evolve the work by carefully placing tints and tones of colour to keep a balance. In this way, I create a sense of movement and space with elements of tranquility. I aim to remove the recognisable, to leave an instinctive feel, provoking thought and understanding of a moment, place or emotion.
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