Karen Silve

Karen Silve (b. Illinois, 1969) is a contemporary American abstract painter working between studios in Portland, Oregon and Provence, France. Distilled from her experiences of nature and place, her large-scale paintings are created from layers of color and accumulated gesture. Fusing the rigour of plein-air observation with the gestural energy of expressionism, she brings her whole body to the act of painting. Critic Peter Frank has observed that "for all their brushy, dripping exuberance, Silve's paintings are composed with an almost architectural rigor that emulates nature's own glorious rhythms," while ARTnews contributor Ann Landi places her alongside her progenitors — de Kooning, Pollock, and Joan Mitchell — and, paraphrasing Harold Rosenberg, observes that what goes into one of her canvases "is not a picture but an event." Silve's artwork has been exhibited internationally — in New York, Washington D.C., Chicago, London, Venice, and Doha — and is held in private and public collections including the U.S. Department of State's Art in Embassies collection.