Karen Silve

Pathways - Rediscovering my Roots

May 2nd - MAy 31st

Opening Reception: Friday, May 2nd 5-7 PM

Artist Statement:

I spent this past year in Provence, rediscovering my roots. Being part French, I’ve visited since childhood and have fond memories at my grandparents’ home in Mison—playing in the fields and jumping into my great-grandfather's fountain filled with icy spring water. In my early 20s, I attended the Leo Marchutz School in Aix-en-Provence, where I fell in love with painting and began to see this region as a spiritual haven. Year after year, I returned to Mison—sometimes for a few weeks, other times for months. This last visit was the longest, over ten months, and I’ve decided to make Provence my primary studio space.

This body of work is about the search for where I want to be and how I see my life. As always, I began painting based on what I was seeing and doing. Over time, my experiences began to coalesce into a theme. I found myself drawn to the idea of pathways—on hikes, walks, and drives. These paths became a metaphor for finding my next steps in life.

Many times, I got in my car, drove to a nearby gorge, and followed a trail I’d never been on. I loved those discoveries, even with the fear—of snakes, spiders, wild boar, or getting lost. I often didn’t know where I was going. When I came to a “Y,” I made a choice and followed it. Sometimes it led me back to where I started, and other times to a quiet place where I’d sit and write or meditate.

I encountered obstacles too—a rock I had to climb, a tree I had to go over or around. But I never saw them as fears, just problems to solve. That’s how I want to approach life now.

This return to Provence feels like a step forward by going back—back to my heritage, culture, and the place where I’ve always felt grounded. This work reflects my emotional response to these paths and obstacles. Though non-representational, it holds a sense of foreground, middle ground, and background—grounding, 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.