Member Biography

ARTIST STATEMENT

"My drawings and paintings have changed my experience of the world around me.  Since I have been practicing my art, faces, gestures, clothing, objects and patterns impress themselves in a different way upon my awareness.  As I paint my imagination is re-ordering my memory of what is ‘important’ and worthy of notice.

I paint people and objects realistically in traditional oils on canvas.  The subjects are active, within a moment or situation and with a particular mood.  Even the objects in a “still life” are skewed, as if they have just moved or are about to move. 

Every week I attend two life drawing sessions.  This is an essential part of my preparation to paint.  Even as I am (usually) working from photographs, my life drawing practice enables me to go beyond my source images and invent details that give life and motion to the paintings, whether figurative or still life.    This process is part of the act of painting itself, a skill I am developing by repeatedly working through problems requiring choices in the handling of color and line.

My paintings capture ordinary people and everyday objects active in a moment of time.  Painting allows me to express these narratives which crowd my mind, and each one suggests to me others, so I never run out of ideas for painting."

RECENT EXHIBITIONS

• “Portrait Show”  Seattle Academy of Fine Arts (Gage Academy), Seattle, WA 
• “Figurative Show”  Seattle Academy of Fine Arts (Gage Academy), Seattle, WA
• Group Show,  North Seattle Community College Art Gallery, Seattle, WA

• Kaewyn Gallery, Bothell, WA

• Women Painters of Washington
• Eastside Association of Fine Arts
• 4 For Art Criitique Group
• Oil Painters of America

• Portrait Painting – Ned Mueller studio, Summer 2008
• Seattle Academy of Fine Arts (Gage Academy)
• Components of the landscape  (1 quarter, 2006) – Suzanne Brooker
• Beginning figure painting  (3 quarters  2004-2005)  - Michael Stasinos
• Figure painting studio (3 quarters, 2004-2005)  - Suzanne Brooker
• North Seattle Community College
• Beginning painting (3 quarters  2002-2003) - Elroy Christianson
• Workshops at the Frye Art Museum
• Figure painting (2003) – Rebecca Allan 
• Color theory  (2002) - Betty Merken 
• Sculpting the human head  (2000) -  Boris Spivak 
• Drawing (2000) - Robert Hoggard
• BS in biology and BS in Medical Technology  (1973)
• The George Washington University,  Washington, DC

See More of Karen's art at karenrichterart.com

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of the Artist

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