Karen Green Record

Karen Green Recor is a Connecticut native who has been in love with painting all of her life and has been drawing and painting since she could hold paintbrushes and crayons. Inspiration to create came at an early age from her mom who was a Sunday painter of landscapes and still life. Later encouraged by her art teachers and professors, Karen pursued higher education and graduated from Russell Sage College in Troy, New York with a B.S. in Fine Arts and Education. She continued her education by acquiring an M.S. degree in art education from Southern Connecticut State University and then began a teaching career. Karen also graduated from Wesleyan University in Middletown and holds an MFA degree in painting from Hartford Art School at the University of Hartford in Connecticut.

Transcending the natural and exploring a window into an internal world these explorations led Karen to experiment further with creating ideas through her use of unconventional materials such as cold wax, natural objects, scraps of cloth, objects, and impasto paint. In addition she continues to evolve while creating various techniques of applying the paint to its surface. By using palette knives, fingers, brushes, sticks, etc. and by scratching, gouging, staining, dripping, deconstructing and using accidents to their best advantage she creates more surface studies that lead to internal explorations as reflected in her Meditation Series (See Review in The New Haven Register, April 16th, 2006). Her explorations from the Meditation Series have a far eastern influence, which informs her artwork and is a result of her interest and study of yoga and Buddhism. This simplicity is conveyed through their texture, color and calligraphic line movement. The primitive marks, color, texture, innate light, asymmetrical compositions and line direct one to focus on these clues leading to a spiritual place.