karen Silve

Pathways - Rediscovering my roots

May 2nd -

Opening Reception: Saturday, May 2nd and May 3rd

Artist Statement

I spent this past year in Provence, rediscovering my roots. Being part French, I have visited Provence since I was a child. I have very fond memories at my grandparent’s home in Mison of playing in the fields and jumping into my great-grandfather's fountain filled with very cold spring water. In my early 20’s, I went to the Leo Marchutz School in Aix-en-Provence. During this time, I fell in love with painting and grew to find this region as a spiritual haven. Year after year I would visit Mison from 2 weeks to 3 months annually. This past visit was the longest at 10+ months. It’s a place in which I feel grounded and have recently decided to make Provence my primary studio space. 

This body of work is about the search of figuring out where I want to be and how I see my life. As in all of my bodies of work, I just start painting inspired from what I am doing, seeing, etc. Then my visions and experiences start to coalesce into a theme. I dive deeper into that theme, and over a period of time, I start to find resolve in crossroads. Over this past year, I found myself contemplating over pathways, primarily in my hikes and walks, but also in my drives. These paths have been a metaphor for my search in finding my next steps in life. 

Many times in Provence, I got in my car, drove to one of the gorges in my region, and walked along a hiking path in which I had never been. I thrived on these discoveries. There was always a little fear that I had to overcome: snakes, spiders, wild boar, or even people in remote areas, but also the fear of being lost and not found. Generally I didn’t know where I was going, nor what was around the next curve or corner on the path. If there was a “Y”, I had to choose which direction. I contemplated which direction and always chose a path. I found that once I stepped firmly in one direction, I followed it. If I stumbled upon another “Y”, I had to choose again. Many times the path took me back to where I started. And other times, I found a special place in which I would sit and meditate or write. 

I found many obstacles in the middle of a path: a large rock that I had to lift myself up and over, or a tree that had fallen and I had to choose if I should go under, over or around it. Surprisingly, I never saw these obstacles as fears, but rather how to develop a strategy to get over or around it. That is how I want to approach my life and the obstacles that I come upon today.

I feel like I’m taking a big step forward by going back to my roots: my heritage, where my grandfather was raised, French culture, my alumni. I’ve always had a connection and a sense of spirituality in Provence because of my memories and history. I feel grounded here. I almost feel like I’ve always lived here. 

This body of work encompasses my emotional responses to these obstacles and pathways. I find there is a sense of “grounding”: foreground, middle ground, and background, with keeping it non-representational. My hope is to create the sensibilities of exploration, peace and resolve.

Biography

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”). In 2024, Silve was chosen by the European Cultural Council to be one of the participating artists in their venues in Venice during the 2024 Venice Biennale.