Karen Olsen-Dunn
Statement
“My process is multi-layered. It is a hybrid between analog and digital, painting, printmaking, and everyday iPhone snaps. My work is not precious. With colors bold and plastic by intent, the final composition is an intricate symphony of contemporary clutter, celebrating the vaguely grim effects of a frayed society.
Biography
Karen Olsen-Dunn is an abstract realist painter known for using color as structure for her high-key colored landscapes and prints. She has a formal education in psychology, painting/drawing, and digital media with post graduate course work in printmaking. She received her MFA from California College of the Arts in 2007 and BA in Psychology from San Francisco State 1988. She has shown her work in numerous exhibitions and art fairs locally and nationally and teaches various methods of Modern Lithographic printmaking and Image transfer in her studio at Pacific Felt Factory and at Kala Art Institute in Berkeley. Her professional career in the software industry developing instructional media for products has influenced her process and works to her advantage in developing her layered mixed-media works. She is able to refine her paintings, prints, and installations by adding intricate patterns of organic and inorganic forms. Her paintings are built up in thin layers of acrylic paint and photographic imagery applied directly to birch panels in a collage process. Her prints include both digital and traditional processes including pronto and wood plate lithography and direct-to-plate photopolymer gravure.
Gallery
