Karen Welsh
Gallery 21 are so excited to welcome Karen Welsh into it’s ever expanding port-folio of collectable artists.
Now the exclusive dealer of her work in the area, we will always have a selection of new works on display, cumulating with her debut Gallery 21 solo exhibition planned for 2024 ‘Beyond The Landscape – An Artists Journey’.
Be sure to add your details to our mailing list for Karen’s VIP Preview Opening, where the artist will be in attendance.
About The Works:
With acrylic paint as her chosen medium and using only a limited palette, keeping the paintings fresh & bold. Making marks with large flat brushes providing the viewer with a loose feel to her work, creating that all important abstract side to her originals.
Karen has been on a journey to abstraction. Her paintings have developed from figurative through to semi abstract and total abstraction. Starting with gestural marking then layering the paint, concentrating on balancing tonal value with colour harmony, She develops the works until she has achieved the desired outcome.
Biography:
Born in Reigate, Surrey January 1962.
Originally Karen worked with her father as a sign painter and commercial artist producing bespoke signs and pictorial art in the traditional way until 2011 when she moved to Wiltshire to begin her new chapter in life as a full time artist.
Wiltshire, with its open chalk hills and wide valleys covered with hardy grasslands, provided the unique landscape that inspired her to relocate. The occasional tree dotted on the horizon accentuates the clean line between the earth and the sky. The feeling of freedom and being on top of the world was her inspiration.
Artist Statement:
“Until 2019, my work was representational landscape painting with a focus on textures and colours. I intended to express the feel of the landscape, the way it forms itself from the ground, to push that contrast between the land and the sky. The colours were taken to their limits, highlighted by spots of pink and blue in response to the reflections of the sky and other objects against each other. I enhanced the textures in the foreground with impasto to create the feel of the freshly cut straw in the field under foot, for example.
I think of my artworks, past and present, as an unfinished diary of my personal reaction to the landscape around me. Moving gradually from representation to abstraction, the shapes and colours I once painted as I saw them are now painted as I feel them.
I mark the canvas with charcoal then layer and evolve the work by carefully placing tints and tones of colour to keep a balance. In this way, I create a sense of movement and space with elements of tranquility. I aim to remove the recognisable, to leave an instinctive feel, provoking thought and understanding of a moment, place or emotion.” – K Welsh
Previous Exhibitions:
2023
The Young Gallery, Salisbury: 9th – 30th September
Hampshire Open Studios, Fordingbridge: 25th – 28th August
The Artist Showcase, Market Square,Salisbury: August
The Thatched Barn Studio, Boyton, Warminster: 29th April– 8th May
2022
The Light Room Gallery, Hampshire: 20th – 23rd August
Fisherton Mill Gallery, Salisbury: 20th August – 24th September
The Studio, Salisbury: 3rd – 18th September
Gallery 4, Salisbury: 4th – 29th October
