Karen Blair lives in Charlottesville, Virginia where the surrounding mountains provide daily inspiration for her work. Her own garden and those of friends inspire the flowers and trees also prevalent in the paintings and collages. There is constant tension between depicting the natural world and finding the essence of things through abstraction. Blair is known for her joyous use of color and for exuberant mark-making. She shares her life with her husband Jimmy Jackson and a Brittany named Remi.

Paintings can be visual records of a place but for me they can also be a remembrance of a collection of events. The large abstracted landscapes, are layered experiences sometimes recalling the miracle of sunrises and sunsets, a time when I pause for a moment to just look, observe and vow to remember. Gardening at Dusk is the moment many of us have who wander outside in the cooler evening air and seeing a weed, reach down to pull, see another and think, “I can clean up this one little area.” An hour later, still at it, I will look up and realize that night is upon me, the woods around the house are dark and the first planets are visible in the night sky. Events and paintings can creep up on me. The challenge is to render both the event and to create on the canvas a painting that stands on its own as a series of marks, colors and shapes. This painting contains high contrast with nuanced whites against dark blue. The blues have references to Yves St. Laurent’s garden in Marrakesh, the lapis robes of The Virgin Mary in religious paintings and our own Blue Ridge Mountains. The circle shapes, a common motif in many paintings, are a shorthand and can represent many things; people, the sun or moon, trees or flowers. A goal of mine is to always allow the viewer leeway to bring personal experiences to the painting. What do you see, what does the painting make you remember, what draws you in? Success is when I overhear guests in a gallery debating various possibilities.

“Karen is among the storied breed who feel ‘comfortable in their skin’. She brings that confidence to the canvas. Whether wild and fierce or supremely serene, her work gets straight to point, inviting us to wrangle the point and receive it as our own. Let me get straight to my own point here: Her work lights up the room.”

-Jan Karon, beloved author of The Mitford Series books, wrote following a visit to Karen Blair’s house and studio.

“Karen’s paintings comprise the inaugural show at the newly opened Phaeton Gallery in Charlottesville, VA. Eighteen works explore nature in abstraction. The show, which includes includes landscapes, waterscapes, and several still life paintings, bounces with vibrancy and life. With broad strokes, graphic marks and bold color, Karen distills each scene to its essence. Viewers will recognize the Blue Ridge Mountains and Rivanna River, but will also be transported far afield to Paris and the Seine. In each scene, Karen captures the unique play of light, asking us to reflect on our own interplay with nature. We can only hope it’s as joyous as hers.”

-Brooke Correll, Founder of KIller B Communications on Blair’s show at Phaeton Gallery.

Home Before Dark: A Visit To An Artist’s Studio

An Essay by Jennifer Ackerman

“On all four walls of the studio are paintings bursting with light, energy, and color. These are paintings that ask you to experience them on a sensory level that goes well beyond seeing. Some explode with the exuberant colors of spring, the shimmery trees and grasses glistening with light after a spring rain, the rapture of birdsong and fresh air. The composition and colors in these paintings—applied with strokes sometimes bold, sometimes delicate—are so bright and active they seem to smash through the world of sight and migrate into the world of touch, sound, even smell.”

Read the entire article...

Jennifer Ackerman is a New York Times bestselling author who has been writing about science, nature, and human biology for more than three decades. Her latest books are The Bird Way and The Genius of Birds. A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship in Nonfiction, a Bunting Fellowship, and a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan foundation, she has been writing about science, nature and human biology for almost three decades. She is a contributor to Scientific American, National Geographic, The New York Times and many other publications. Home Before Dark is her interview with Karen Blair.

Lady Painters: Inspired by Joan Mitchell

“The best artists learn from the best artists. Throughout history, creators emulate their forebears, simultaneously challenged by and challenging the work of those who have influenced them. Look at Picasso’s earliest copies of the Prado masters versus his last paintings that return to his contemplating the skill of greats Rembrandt, Velazquez, Degas, and Manet. Look at Van Gogh studying Rembrandt’s self-portraits and Millet’s Sower. Look at Joan Mitchell considering Monet, Van Gogh, Cezanne, and others. And now, witness as Kristen Chiacchia so brilliantly did when she planned this show, Isabelle Abbot, Karen Blair, Janet Bruce, Molly Herman, and Priscilla Long Whitlock looking at Joan Mitchell. Finally, a female master and mentor, too!

A personal encounter with Joan Mitchell’s actual art—as opposed to images of it—is arresting and powerful. We all have our own Joan Mitchell stories…”

LADY PAINTERS: INSPIRED BY JOAN MITCHELL - GROUP SHOW
Second Street Gallery, Charlottesville, VA - Summer 2019
Catalogue Essay by Lyn Bolen Warren

“ …Karen Blair writes, ‘a Joan Mitchell painting will stop me dead in my tracks. The force, energy, and maybe stubbornness come through along with all of the glorious celebration of color.’ A former landscape and portraiture expert, Blair has consistently evolved into more abstract realms, reacting to fresh influences from her favorite mentors such as Mitchell and Matisse. Her Gardening in the South is a tour de force of this development.”

Corporate Collections

Hourigan/Apex, Charlottesville, VA
UVA Health Orthopedic Center, Charlottesville, VA
Arbor Acres, Winston-Salem, NC
Hart Howerton/Keswick Hall, Charlottesville, VA
Allan Myers, Richmond, VA
Heritage Wealth Advisors, Richmond, VA
Inova Schar Cancer Institute, Fairfax, VA
Phillip Morris, USA, Richmond, VA
Dominion Resources, Richmond, VA
University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, Project Art, Iowa City, IA
University of Virginia Health System, Charlottesville, VA
Couric Clinical Cancer Center, UVA Hospital, Charlottesville, VA
UVA Children’s Hospital, Charlottesville, VA
Martha Jefferson Hospital, Charlottesville, VA
Levine Cancer Institute, Charlotte, NC
Capital One, Richmond, VA
Markel Corporation, Richmond, VA
Owens&Minor, Richmond, VA
Hourigan Construction, Inc., Richmond, VA
Troutman Sanders LLP, Richmond, VA
LeClair Ryan, A Professional Corporation, Richmond, VA
Westminster Canterbury, Richmond, VA
The Jefferson Hotel, Richmond, VA
Taylor Hoffman, Richmond, VA
Miller Financial Group, Charlottesville, VA
Atlantic Union Bank, VA

Educations and Grants

2008 Artist Residency, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Reynolds Foundation Grant Recipient
2003 Artist Residency, Vermont Studio Center, Johnson VT
1976 BFA University of North Carolina Greensboro

Selected Exhibitions

2024 Phaeton Gallery, Charlottesville, VA
2024 Portland Art Gallery, Portland, ME
2024 Second Street Gallery, Charlottesville, VA
2023 Artist Collective, Charleston, SC
2023 Findings Art Store, Lynchburg, VA
2023 Portland Art Gallery, Portland, ME
2022 Phaeton Gallery, Charlottesville, VA
2022 Arbor Acres, Winston-Salem, NC
2022 Portland Art Gallery, Portland, ME
2021 Page Bond Gallery, Richmond, VA
2020 Aspire House, Designer Show House, McLean, VA

2020 Page Bond Gallery, Richmond, VA
2020 Warm Springs Gallery, Warm Springs, VA
2020 Artist Collective, Washington, DC
2020 Serena and Lily
2019 Bee Street Gallery, Dallas, TX

2019 Les Yeux du Monde Gallery, Charlottesville, VA
2019 Second Street Gallery, Charlottesville, VA
2019 Portsmouth Art & Cultural Center, Portsmouth, VA
2019 Page Bond Gallery, Richmond, VA
2019 Sugarlift, New York, NY
2018 Page Bond Gallery, Richmond, VA
2017 Page Bond Gallery, Richmond, VA
2017 Les Yeux du Monde Gallery, Charlottesville, VA
2017 The Art Box, Crozet, VA
2017 Warm Springs Gallery, Warm Springs, VA
2016 Current Art Fair, Richmond, VA
2016 Bee Street Studio, Dallas, TX
2016 Page Bond Gallery, Richmond, VA
2016 Shenandoah Valley Arts Center, VA
2016 CoArts Gallery, Staunton, VA
2015 Southern Living Idea House, Charlottesville, VA
2014 Portsmouth Art and Cultural Center, Portsmouth, VA
2014 Page Bond Gallery, Richmond, VA
2013 Portsmouth Art & Cultural Center, Portsmouth, VA
2013 McGuffey Art Center, Charlottesville, VA
2013 Page Bond Gallery, Richmond, VA
2013 Hodges-Taylor Gallery, Charlotte, NC
2012 Les Yeux du Monde Gallery, Charlottesville, VA
2012 Gallery Piquel, New Hope, PA
2011 The United States Capitol Building, Washington, DC
2011 Page Bond Gallery, Richmond, VA
2011 McGuffey Art Center, Charlottesville, VA
2010 Hampton House Gallery, Winston-Salem, NC
2008 Studio 11 Gallery, Lexington, VA
2008 Symphony Designer House, Richmond, VA
2008 Page Bond Gallery, Richmond, VA
2005 Page Bond Gallery, Richmond, VA
2005 Radius 250, Plant Zero, Richmond, VA. Juried exhibition curated by Dr. John Ravenal, Curator of Contemporary Art, Virginia Museum of Fine Art
2004 Gallery 5800, Richmond, VA
2003 Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT

Karen Blair: Artist Profile

Video Short By Kate Garber

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