Karen Silve
Karen Silve’s paintings are distillations of her emotions, impressions, and experiences in the realms of nature and culture. Surrounded by the scenic beauty of the Pacific Northwest, where she is based, and the countryside around her family home in Provence, France, she layers color and gesture into abstracted narratives—composites of visuals, sensations, and memories, which coalesce in a non-literal pictorial space. Often, the paintings create a bridge between counterpoints, such as ambiguity/clarity, calmness/tension, and exterior/interior—resulting in a deep sense of harmony and resolution.
Placing the artist in the lineages of Cézanne, Monet, de Kooning, and Mitchell, renowned critic Peter Frank adds: “For all their brushy, dripping exuberance, Silve’s paintings are composed with an almost architectural rigor that emulates nature’s own glorious rhythms.”
This heightened sensitivity to the natural world may stem from her early work in figuration and landscape. It was as an emerging artist, studying in Aix-en-Provence France at the Leo Marchutz School, that she found her true passion for painting, color, and nature, as well as the work ethic that would power her through the years to come. Since those formative years, she has exhibited in museums, art centers, and galleries in New York City, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Miami, Santa Fe, and Sun Valley, as well as the United Kingdom, Qatar, Brunei, and Mexico, where her work is included in the permanent collection of the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey. The recipient of prestigious grants and residencies, she has won critical praise in publications such as The Washington Post (“Her free hand and lively spattering recall Jackson Pollock... and parallel the technique of Gerhard Richter”) and from ARTnews and New York Times contributor Ann Landi (“Because many of her works are human-scaled, we relate to them with our own bodies and enter into her dialogue with materials”).
ARTIST STATEMENT
The evolution of this work started in 2020, a dreadful year! But I needed to stay positive for my health. I had three surgeries lined up in 2020 wherein I had to be strong going into each surgery, then rest, recover and rebuild my strength again for the next… then repeat. Painting seemed impossible. Between my first and second surgery, I only painted one painting! But it was a great one.
While recovering from my second surgery, I couldn’t lift more than 10 pounds, and smoke from wildfires made it so I couldn’t see my friends, inside nor out - I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Many days, flowers were left by my friends with the food on my porch. It became my tenacity of strength, and I have my friends to thank for it! I was humbled.
I loved watching the expressive faces of the flowers as they opened up, then finally drooping, as the petals drifted down to the floor like colored ashes. Ironically, more flowers appeared on my front porch every time a few flowers in my bouquet died. I rejuvenated the vase by adding the new flowers to the old ones. It gave me a sense of hope, rebirth, and renewal. In turn, I had an eternal bouquet of flourishing blooms in my studio.
In my studio, grays along with subtle and vibrant colors made their way into my paintings. I found such beauty in the flowers and renewal of the bouquet. This relentless year kept delivering unbearable situations! Between the lockdown of COVID and the protests here in Portland, we also endured a couple of "smoked-out" weeks from the wildfires. In my studio, I had been deep into the concept of the renewal of life after death (or destruction). The rejuvenation of an eternal bouquet of flowers in my studio was the inspiration. This is the central theme of my latest body of work “Rejuvenation” dedicated to my friends for their support during a time of recovery after invasive surgeries.