Curator's Eye: On Line

Selected by Otto Youngers, Curator, Sea-Tac International Airport

The use of lines is ever present in Karen's work, an expansive body, including paintings, prints, photographs, letterpress and mixed media. Delicately inscribed or sensitively applied to the work, the lines suggest a human construction, an architecture affixed to her organic and natural imagery. The lines are sometimes inserted in disconcerting ways reminding us of the omnipresent visual clutter we tend to block out when we view the world.

Karen's encaustic paintings seem to contain a power waiting to burst forth from the subtle surfaces. Her use of wax material is integral to the moody nature of the work creating "scapes" that recall the Northwest but could be from the moors of Scotland. In many cases, her surfaces muffle the painterly action and collaged memories that lie beneath. But Karen is not afraid to disturb the surfaces, sculpting the wax, creating texture and ripping it away to reveal layers below: complexity is the driver behind her simplicity.
- O.Y.

"People consider my paintings a kind of formalism and/or abstraction, but I really see them simply as observational. They are all created from specific moments and structures, from changes of light and places observed in the everyday. When I enter the studio with 'intent' the process begins to fall apart. Consequently, I try to make myself receptive to the materials and to everyday spaces. Ultimately my joy in the work, beyond the studio experience, is when the viewer sees the spaces that I saw."
-K.D.

Day and Night (detail), 2004, encaustic and fabric on canvas, 20 x 20 inches