GESTURE: A significant movement of the limb or the body; the use of such movement to convey feeling…; an action to evoke a response or convey intention.
The Oxford Dictionary and Thesaurus, Oxford University Press 1995
This body of work sees Karen pare back all but the essential, colour and gesture.
Her colour is flat and matt, layered with many glossy glazes or blended, wet into wet. Sometimes bold, sometimes sensitive, all applications are an exploration of the joy that is colour.
Her marks are gestures. Expressions of her whole body, created not by timid, cautious movements of her fingers or hands, but with sweeping gestures of arm and body. Passionate sweepings of paint ladened bristles across carefully prepared linen.
Moving away from literal or figurative representations, the works are abstract expressions of the feelings associated with being. The paintings nurture a dialogue between the internal and external environment, eschewing pre-existing ideas of what that environment is, or should be.
Through the use of colour and gestural mark making, the paintings investigate passion and intimacy and convey the inextricable relationship of both colour and gestural mark making to our emotions.
Below is a selection of paintings from this body of work.
