Karen Allen

My paintings and drawings in acrylic, oils and pastels are figurative abstractions. 

 I look for balance and contrast between playfulness and considered graphic call and response during my painting process. Sometimes my working surfaces are 3 dimensional objects whose functionality becomes changed into an allegory or a metaphor. This is a clue of how and what the painting tells me about my interior life. Creating art is for me a contemplative process as well as a physical one.

In my work I am looking for visual paradoxes, a crossing into an immensity of space that may have no relationship to the actual size of things. I am becoming even more interested in how change in physical scale changes a painting’s feelings and intentions. Aesthetically, I am very interested in how painting ideas can be scaled to mural sized works in public spaces both to enhance architectural space and express something personal.

Underlying all this is what I call my “second truth”. That is, the positive and regenerative life force that I believe lies in the universe we inhabit. A universe so beautiful, yet so full of tragedy, disappointment and darwinian struggle. I am a very flawed and imperfect idealist who actually believes the act of creation by artists has something to do with our deepest calling to be whole.