Karen C
Karen Colville (she/her) is a West Coast Scenery Painter of mood, light, calmness, and tranquillity in her landscapes, with considerable skills in oil and watercolour. Her subject strength, recognized by her Collectors, is landscapes and in recent years those of Western Canada. Her early works were of rural life in Ontario and Quebec, Canada. In the early stages of Karen’s art career, she was educated in Fine Arts at Toronto’s OCAD and Vancouver’s Emily Carr. As an independent emerging artist representing Canada, she travelled internationally to learn about ancient art history with cultural immersion, cultural practices, and to exhibit at prestigious events. Karen’s recurring themes in her art are about peace and solitude in BC. Certain places are considered as sacred as much as supernatural, to have the ability to increase our sense of peacefulness in an unpredictable world.
Karen is now located in Vancouver, BC. She has expanded her practice to include natural materials such as lichen moss in her work, bamboo, found natural materials, handcrafted organics that are based on historic research with a contemporary unique style. She also designs ecologically, and repurposed objects, including slow fashion hand weaving, sewing embellishments into ornate wall hangings in an artisan stylistic manner to reconnect to Mother Earth. Karen has participated in community arts, working with worthy causes of importance in humanities. She enjoys going on location to BC Parks, Community Gardens, and she participates in group and solo shows locally and internationally online.
Karen Colville is always engaged in artistic practices, experiencing continued growth with methods of exploration of materials, environment, and working with nature. Karen often uses weaving, encaustic, and natural paint. This has great importance to her. She has dedicated a lot of her life, time, and energy to strengthening her skill set while respecting people and the planet. Karen has participated in ecological based art shows, which exhibit her recent works. Karen is in the final phase of First Nations workshops with First Nations artists as part of the Truth and Reconciliation process in British Columbia. Karen also participated in a workshop with the Vancouver Art Gallery of Coastal Artists using natural and indigenous materials in their work as a group.
Her views and perceptions on what she creates are changing, evolving, and adapting. Artists are always adapting to changes in economy and public perception with education. The Natural world is a sanctuary. People are waking up to consumerism with increasing costs in the way they live as food security, the rising costs of fuel, housing, and supply and demand as a means of control over their lives. Her concern for having less impact on the earth and environment comes from having values, while learning and creating aesthetics in works, with research creating unique objects, harvesting with respect to others, plants and the land, with meditation, and reflection. She has also been inspired by local ecological artists in her work in the selection of materials she uses and keeping works local by supporting local business while respecting our land and water.
Artwork Gallery (Click images to enlarge)
Artwork Below may be Different from what is Shown at the Exhibit
