California, I’m coming home
Love letters to California
Solo exhibition at the Cafe Art Gallery at 400 County Center, Redwood City, CA, open Monday to Friday, 8am-5pm. Show open 3 March and ends 20 April 2023.
About the presented work
As an Australian resident of the Bay Area, Karen has come to experience California as the home of her heart; a place that so openly welcomed and included her since arriving 5 years ago. This exhibition comprises Karen’s love notes to California, particularly the Bay Area. Her paintings and poetry in this show highlight the joy, inequality, beauty and heartbreak of a life lived far away from home, only to find a deeper kind of connection to place here as a result.
The art reflects Karen’s captivation by California’s breathtaking landscapes, vibrant and diverse culture, creative spirit and open-mindedness. Layers of history shine through, not only in the architecture and geography, but in the social dynamics and institutions. A land of contradictions and wild dreams, particularly in the Bay Area where failure is no foe and inequality is entangled with orchestrated innovation.
In this show of poetry and paintings, Karen seeks to inspire reflection and deep listening to our surrounding social and physical environments. Grounded in a love for each being in the area, the show is a call to connect with each other and our souls. Pieces in the show reflect back the stories we tell ourselves about this place, and invite us to question our role in those stories. The show is also a celebration of the joy found in our everyday lives here, for it is in the daily mundane that the magic of California is made possible.
Thanks to Redwood City Pulse for this show write-up.
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Bird’s-Eye View. 36 x 24 inch hexaptych (6 panel painting). Framed dimensions 39 x 26 x 1.5 inches. Acrylic and collage on wood panel. Also shown at the SWELL Smalls Art Prize, 1-17 March 2024. Purchase here.
Description: The view from my window is divided my window’s metal frame, through which I enjoy the tree outside, up close, from a bird’s-eye view. Trees are incredibly generous beings, offering cool shade, food, shelter and a gathering place. Numerous birds play and live in this particular tree, singing and chirping to each other all day.
Sharing space with this tree, birds and squirrels fills me with joy. Despite being surrounded by driveways and multi-family dwellings, somehow this tiny space feels vast when I’m present with the life here. This painting honors that wondrous, spacious feeling of being part of this ecosystem.
I followed an intuitive process over multiple layers that led to the painting you see here. If you look carefully, you’ll see the history of layers beneath, symbolizing the importance of connecting with the lifeforce around us, right before our eyes.
See a four-part time lapse video series of this painting being created here: https://www.youtube.com/@DrKMcB.
The Smile of the Street. 12 x 12 inch (Framed dimensions 13x13x1.5 inches). Acrylic on wood panel. See more and purchase here.
Description: The painting is a celebration of the pushcart peddlers where I live in Redwood City. Each afternoon the local vendors come tooting or ringing their bells, or park on corners, and so many happy people greet them to enjoy their food. They’re culture bearers and nourishment providers.
The California Street Vendors movement also taught me about the fight that continues to ensure all street vendors are recognised as part of California’s economy, with rights and protections. Go check out their work and please consider supporting our local pushcart vendors.
Moved On. 12 x 12 inches (Framed dimensions 13x13x1.5 inches). Acrylic on wood panel. SOLD.
Description: The moment I walked by the corner of 800 Main Street in Redwood City, I knew Hotel Sequoia was special. I became captivated by the landmark building and the stories it carries. Since the hotel’s grand beginnings in 1912, it has had many evolutions. Most recently, its SRO (Single Room Occupant) residents were moved on, preparing the way for renovations that seek to bring the hotel back to its most excellent state. This painting is an ode to the people who have lived and stayed in Hotel Sequoia, and all of those who love the building.
Anticipation. 12 x 12 inch (Framed dimensions 13x13x1.5 inches). Acrylic and collage on wood panel. SOLD.
Description: I wonder what scene you see in this painting? The painting symbolizes a few things to me. In one way, it captures a memory with loved ones in Santa Barbara. The scene also reflects that not all people can be in certain places and have certain things that others can. In another way, the painting captures that moment of being on the cusp of a new beginning. Whatever the interpretation, I feel a sense of anticipation of what is yet to come in this painting. What about you?
The use of mixed media elements brings forth a texture on the wall that reflects the Spanish adobe walls that helped inspire this painting’s setting.
Smoke Again. 12 x 12 inch (Framed dimensions 13x13x1.5 inches). Acrylic and collage on wood panel. SOLD.
Description: In recent Bay Area Summers, many here hope to be spared another extreme wildfire season. This painting reflects one Summer morning when I set out with friends for our early bike ride, where we witnessed the sun rising behind a smoke-filled sky due to fires in California and Oregan. The smokey air brought with it our fear of another fire season.
In these challenging times of climate change, I feel inspired by the way the land and nature continue to evolve and resolve. This inspiration energized the painting.
See the accompanying poem, “Breathing ashes of ancients” in the next image.
Survivor (Hands off my pup). 12 x 12 inches (Framed dimensions 13x13x1.5 inches). Acrylic and collage media on wood panel. SOLD.
Description: Each Winter at the Año Nuevo seaside, one of the most magnificent animal migration events takes place: the Northern Elephant Seals return for mating and birthing season. Thousands of elephant seals cover the beach and frolic in the sea. A loud chorus of bellows and grunts provides the backdrop to a show of bull males combating for their right to stay and the affection of females. I will never forget the experience of seeing this.
Nor will I forget their history. By the end of the 1800s, only 50-100 elephant seals were left, after being hunted for their blubber. I think of the terror they had been through, seeing their kin slaughtered as they reached the brink of extinction. The seals were subsequently granted protected status and their population recovered. It seems almost poetic that, after their exploited experience following the Spanish colonization, these seals have colonized the beach and island at Año Nuevo State Park.
The use of mixed media in this acrylic painting brings forth a texture that honors the elephant seal hair and outer skin layers that molt, and to the sand-storms that rise during their fights.
Professor Bow Bow. 12 x 12 inches (Framed dimensions 13x13x1.5 inches). Acrylic and modeling compound on wood panel.
Description: In this painting, I seek to capture the sophistication and playfulness of the cat companions in our lives. I intentionally painted in black and white to hone in on this feline’s shape and attentiveness. The texture in this painting brings the cat’s fluffiness to life.
I am intrigued how an animal’s face can be a way for humans (especially of Western cultures) to find empathy and connection with animals. Is this indicative of a human need to see ourselves in an animal before we are able to recognise them as related? If it is, what does that tendency tell us about how we relate to the more-than-human world?
Are you awake yet? 12 x 12 inches. Acrylic and collage on wood panel. SOLD
Description: I made this painting with love and joy for a particular cat and its owner, as a celebration of friendship. I set out to make this a blue painting, creating a magical portrait of this sweet cat. Both the cat’s owner and I are bike lovers, so I collaged bicycle magazines in the earlier layers. I worked multiple layers of color to create a vibrant furry texture.
This painting is a reverence for friendship where there is space to play, witness and be witnessed - with human and non-human animals. It was a fun painting to create.
Bay Area Grasslands. 6 x 6 x 1.25 inches. Acrylic on gallery canvas. See more details and purchase here.
Description: This painting is a meditation on the native grass surrounding the trails in Portola Valley and surrounding areas. In Summer, the grass and land are very dry here; a drought will do that. But also the native grasses know how to survive drought.
This painting is a celebration of this land, which upholds and nurtures our lives. This land that shares its wisdom through its resilience, showing us ways to connect with community and our souls. This land which has accepted me for who I am. Read the accompanying poem, “A hello and good-bye” in the next image.
Life on the Vine. 12 x 12 inch (Framed dimensions 13x13x1.5 inches). Acrylic on wood panel. SOLD.
Description: This painting was created through experimentation and play. I first approached the panel by allowing myself to create any marks or colors I desired. As I continued, I noticed a desire for more white space - perhaps in my life, not only on the panel. Inspired by the vines I have seen at wineries in the Santa Cruz Mountains, I curated the light-value space to reveal an old grape vine that provides a home to this area’s curious birds.
Bay Area Bunny. 11 x 14 inches (matted in 16 x 20 inch frame). Acrylic and collage on paper. SOLD
Description: I created this piece after a hike along the Bay Trail, where I saw a jackrabbit frolicking and jumping near the water. It was so fun using the ‘lost and found’ approach to create it, which is an intuitive painting process taught to me by my artist mother to see what a painting wants to become. At the ‘masking stage’ (where I tape over sections, continue to paint, then remove the tape to see a new composition), a rabbit emerged. I nurtured that vision until what you see in this painting.
Just a Whisper. 12x12 inches (framed dimensions 13x13x1.5 inches). Acrylic and mixed media on wood panel. SOLD. Shown at the Drawing Room SF, 18 February - 31 March 2023.
I recently had the chance to hike in the Morro Rock area. The conspicuous Morro Bay Power Plant stood by, commanding attention, but it was the sky and her swallowing of the power plant stacks that intrigued me. This painting is a sensory celebration of that brilliant California sky.
Bay Area Portal. Acrylic on paper. 11 x 14 inches. SOLD.
If you’ve ever been along the San Francisco Bay shoreline on the peninsula, then you may have experienced those days when the haze and sunlight bind the water and sky into one indistinguishable blanket that wraps itself around you.
The experience is quite surreal, like a portal into a parallel world.
In this piece, I play with paint and texture to capture that experience and remember it.
Treehouse. 11x14 inches (framed dimensions 16 x 18.5 inches). Acrylic and collage on paper. SOLD.
Description: I created this painting in response to a poem I wrote as part of the CRE-STRIDE* Deadly Poets Society. This image wouldn’t leave me as I created the poem, inviting me to paint it. The poem explores what it is to be home when factors beyond our control dictate which places are reachable. In both the poem and the painting, I seek to capture the feeling of home as a place that is made of relationships and connections. See the poem, “She’s home”, in the next image.
*Centre for Research Excellence: STRengthening systems for InDigenous health care Equity (CRE-STRIDE)
Unthanksgiving. 9 x 12 Inch (framed dimensions 16 x 13 inches). Graphite on paper. Purchase here.
Description: Each year on Thanksgiving, the Indigenous Peoples Sunrise Ceremony, aka Unthanksgiving, takes place on Alcatraz. I sketched this image while thinking about the 1969 occupation of Alcatraz by the Indians of All Tribes, who wanted to build a community, spiritual, and ecological centre on Alcatraz, for and overseen by Native people. They occupied Alcatraz for 19 months - which at the time was unused surplus land. For a while, hundreds of people lived on the island. Although the government denied the occupiers’ proposal, their protest contributed to the end of the harmful termination laws and inspired further protests across the Americas.
Eco-anxiety in Edgewood Park. 16 x 20 inch (Framed dimensions 25.5 x 21.5 inches). Acrylic on canvas. SOLD.
Description: This painting is an interpretation of a spot that I hike by in Edgewood Park, San Mateo County. I am grateful for the beauty around us, right on our doorstep. Nature and a right relationship with her inspires me. I see our human behavior and institutions hurt earth, and yet she nourishes and invigorates us.
This painting reflects my love for and inspiration from the land here, along with anxiety from climate-change induced fire seasons - can you sense the hint of a fire memory in the colors? In fact, just last year in 2022, Edgewood Park was on fire.
Waiting at the Doors. 11 x 15 Inch (Matted in 16x20 frame; framed dimensions 19.5 x 23.5 inches). Acrylic and collage on paper. SOLD.
Description: I created these doors by following a meditative process of listening and responding to images that I liked, while grounding myself observing the sights and sounds surrounding me where I live in Redwood City. I concluded the creative process by writing an accompanying poem, also called “Waiting at the doors”, which you can view in the next image.
Simply not who we are. 9 x 12 Inch (framed dimensions 16 x 13 inches). Graphite on paper. $100. See more details and purchase here.
Description: I sketched this thinking of the nearly 30,000 Haitian migrants who had passed through a camp on the banks of the Rio Grande in Texas when in September 2021, some migrants had bought food in Mexico. When crossing the river to return to the US, US border forces used their horses and in some instances, long reins, to chase and turn them back.
Many of the migrants had been hoping to seek asylum in the US but the Biden administration deported thousands of migrants back to Haiti. The migrants have been treated as some kind of problem to hide, to send away, with a narrative that how they were treated is “not who we are”. But there is a history and recurring pattern in which the US is implicated.
California also has a role in detaining and deporting asylum seekers. In fact, at the time of hanging this show (February 2023), a week-long hunger strike was underway in two Californian immigration detention centers, where detainees were calling for improvement of the “soul-crushing” working and living conditions they are subjected to.
In this broader sense, this sketch invites a questioning of the validity of the immigration system as a whole and of people’s ability to seek asylum.
You gave me the world. Acrylic and mixed media on wood panel, 12x12 inches. SOLD.
This painting is inspired by the little birds that live, play and sing in my small courtyard. I enjoy watching the birds sit on the fence watching me, so in this painting I created a whole new world for them to enjoy. Instead of the units/houses and concrete squeezed closely together, this bird gets to admire a fantastical sky from which the sun’s brilliance lights all that regards it.
In giving these birds a new world, I realise how they have already given me the world, right here where I am.
For our Sins. 12 x 12 inches. Acrylic on wood panel. SOLD.
My joy and love for our resident hummingbird inspired this piece. When I began painting her, I was overcome with fear of what another climate-change induced fire season might mean for her and our animal kin - and humanity. Where would the animals go, if their territory is destroyed and air spoiled by choking wildfire smoke?
The flames rising in this painting echo my fear of and anger with humanity’s reckless sacrificing of our animal kin. These birds calm and inspire me.
Despite their tiny size, their tiny beaks, their body’s rapid use of energy - they are beautifully alive, embracing all they can do.
