KAREN HALPERN
KAREN HALPERN'S 50+ year career as a professional artist is defined by its consistent exhibition record and history of award recognition. She established herself early as an Art Instructor at Indiana State University. Karen is noted for her painting workshops, which she has conducted in scenic locations across the United States. Taos and Santa Fe NM, Cape Cod MA, Northern Michigan(Charlevoix, Petoskey, Beaver Island, Owasso) number among them.
Her work is included in both corporate and private collections in the U S and abroad. Most recently her paintings have been represented by the Nomad Gallery, Southfield MI, Synchronicity Gallery, Glen Arbor, MI, Orchard Lake Framing and Gallery, Orchard Lake/ Keego Harbor MI. Many Awards of Recognition highlight her participation in 90 National and Regional Exhibitions and 18 Solo Shows.
Originally from New York, this noted Michigan artist currently teaches watercolor, oil and acrylic painting, and Studio Art , mixed-media, and Perspective, and Drawing. she has taught at the Birmingham/ Bloomfield Art Center, the Community House, and numerous other Michigan Fine Arts Programs. A popular Instructor, Karen presently teaches at NEXT Senior Center in Birmingham, Royal Oak Continuing Education, and Troy Community Education.
Karen has been a member of the Detroit Society of Women Painters and Sculptors and the Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center, and Associate Member American Women Artists.
Her work is included in both corporate and private collections in the U S and abroad. Most recently her paintings have been represented by the Nomad Gallery, Southfield MI, Synchronicity Gallery, Glen Arbor, MI, Orchard Lake Framing and Gallery, Orchard Lake/ Keego Harbor MI. Many Awards of Recognition highlight her participation in 90 National and Regional Exhibitions and 18 Solo Shows.
Originally from New York, this noted Michigan artist currently teaches watercolor, oil and acrylic painting, and Studio Art , mixed-media, and Perspective, and Drawing. she has taught at the Birmingham/ Bloomfield Art Center, the Community House, and numerous other Michigan Fine Arts Programs. A popular Instructor, Karen presently teaches at NEXT Senior Center in Birmingham, Royal Oak Continuing Education, and Troy Community Education.
Karen has been a member of the Detroit Society of Women Painters and Sculptors and the Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center, and Associate Member American Women Artists.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT – Karen Halpern
Paintings that have dominated my work during the last few years have been portraits in acrylic, developed by adding collage/mixed-media elements, incorporated as a means of better expressing the nature of the people and I have selected to paint. Materials like corrugation, rice paper, metallic paint, patterned and textured papers, fabric, packing and tissue papers, which I often embellish with acrylic paint (to better integrate them with the acrylic portraits), have become the tools I use. These extraneous materials helps me to describe for the viewer the visual environments of the subjects that exist in my imagination, the personal characters that I find in my mind’s eye.
In each portrait, I am striving to convey the physical sense of the sitter in my initial painted sketch, executed in acrylics, which forms the “bones” of the painting. I will then build the “muscle” on this “armature” with acrylic paints, and both flat and dimensional materials, to help the image grow into the concept I envision. Guided by my many years of painting experience, I find that my paint and my hand function together as one unit, each knowing what the other is about. As I paint I become a part of the process, sometimes telling the paint what to do, and sometimes being guided by what the image and the paint are telling me to do. Time spent in research pertaining to my theme, in the early stages of development, and experience in handling this method of working, assure me that the painting will find its own shape and come together in a meaningful statement.
As a working artist in my fifty year career, some significant icons have influenced my ideas and style. They include the design quality of the Cubists, Picasso, Gris, and Braque, the intensity of the German Expressionists, the color and painterly style of the impressionists, Monet, Matisse. Bonnard, and the Post Impressionists, Van Gogh, Derain, and Vlaminck.
Working with collage and all manner of added dimension has been significant, even in my early work, inspired by the significant world-changing methods of Robert Rauschenberg, Tom Wesselman, Red Grooms, and Romare Bearden.
Furthermore my interest in telling about the human condition has been guided by my reverence for Diego Rivera, Kathe Kollwitz, Ben Shahn, and Pablo Picasso’s early work. People and the human condition motivate the work I do.
Paintings that have dominated my work during the last few years have been portraits in acrylic, developed by adding collage/mixed-media elements, incorporated as a means of better expressing the nature of the people and I have selected to paint. Materials like corrugation, rice paper, metallic paint, patterned and textured papers, fabric, packing and tissue papers, which I often embellish with acrylic paint (to better integrate them with the acrylic portraits), have become the tools I use. These extraneous materials helps me to describe for the viewer the visual environments of the subjects that exist in my imagination, the personal characters that I find in my mind’s eye.
In each portrait, I am striving to convey the physical sense of the sitter in my initial painted sketch, executed in acrylics, which forms the “bones” of the painting. I will then build the “muscle” on this “armature” with acrylic paints, and both flat and dimensional materials, to help the image grow into the concept I envision. Guided by my many years of painting experience, I find that my paint and my hand function together as one unit, each knowing what the other is about. As I paint I become a part of the process, sometimes telling the paint what to do, and sometimes being guided by what the image and the paint are telling me to do. Time spent in research pertaining to my theme, in the early stages of development, and experience in handling this method of working, assure me that the painting will find its own shape and come together in a meaningful statement.
As a working artist in my fifty year career, some significant icons have influenced my ideas and style. They include the design quality of the Cubists, Picasso, Gris, and Braque, the intensity of the German Expressionists, the color and painterly style of the impressionists, Monet, Matisse. Bonnard, and the Post Impressionists, Van Gogh, Derain, and Vlaminck.
Working with collage and all manner of added dimension has been significant, even in my early work, inspired by the significant world-changing methods of Robert Rauschenberg, Tom Wesselman, Red Grooms, and Romare Bearden.
Furthermore my interest in telling about the human condition has been guided by my reverence for Diego Rivera, Kathe Kollwitz, Ben Shahn, and Pablo Picasso’s early work. People and the human condition motivate the work I do.
