Spring 2020, Volume 28

Art by Karen Olsen-Dunn

For Alternate Non-Flash Gallery


List of images:

 1 Mendocino Glitch, 60x48, Acrylic and Mixed Media, 2019
 2 Refracted Pool, Acrylic and Mixed Media on Panel, 60x48, 2020
 3 Path to the Point, Acrylic and Mixed Media, 60x48, 2020
 4 Fractured Golden Haze, Acrylic and Mixed Media, 36x48, 2020
 5 Tricksy Green, Acrylic and Mixed Media, 36x48, 2020
 6 Nature Washes Clean, Acrylic and Mixed Media, 48x36, 2020
 7 Mixed Character Composite Matar, Pigment Print and Ink on Japanese     Gampi, 30x30, 2020
 8 Freaked Pansy, Pigment Print and Ink on Japanese Gampi, 14x24, 2020
 9 Faulty Seed Code, Pigment Print and Ink on Japanese Gampi, 18x24,     2020
10 Love You Daisy, Pigment Print and Ink on Japanese Gampi, 8x24, 2020


Artist Statement:

As a visual artist, how do I protest and express my dismay at the loss, the fracturing, the fragmenting, the dismantling, the absolute assault on natural resources? I use high-key, garish, multi-tonal colors that don’t follow the normal chromatic rules of the natural world. Oceans are pink, trees are red, lakes are electric green, skies have triangles, reflections are refracted. Paintings are cut, layered, and reassembled out of order with paint and photographic materials. Why? The human effects on landscapes and oceans speak to a fractured future for our landscapes which in my view is totally out of order. 

It’s been a hard time on public lands and an even harder one on our oceans. The Trump administration is determined to shrink the size of National monuments and curb funding which has caused park facilities, roads, and other park structures to fall further into disrepair. Slow progress to recognize or correct the effects of climate change has warmed ocean temperatures to such a degree that reefs are dying and shrinking in front of our eyes. 

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About the Artist:

Karen Olsen-Dunn 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.  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. Multi-colored acrylic paints and thin layers of photographic images are applied directly to birch panels building up multiple layers in a collage process to create the final work that leaves the viewer wondering what is painted and what is digital.