Karen Woods

Takeoff

2022

Karen Woods paints a traveler’s view through the window of a moving vehicle rendered in subtly nuanced gestures in oil on canvas or panel. These views from the front seat of a car lo...

Karen Woods paints a traveler’s view through the window of a moving vehicle rendered in subtly nuanced gestures in oil on canvas or panel. These views from the front seat of a car lo...

Represented by George Billis Gallery, NYC & LA --Trevor Young is a quintessentially American painter. He makes no bones about his affection for the trappings of car culture, life on ...

Karen Woods paints a traveler’s view through the window of a moving vehicle rendered in subtly nuanced gestures in oil on canvas or panel. These views from the front seat of a car looking through an often rain-splattered windshield or side window, are always about water: water from above, as a rainstorm, or from below, as a man-made sprinkler system. She is drawn to the interplay of water and light, and how it affects our perception of reality through reflection, distortion, and transformation. The compositions often include a bit of the car - the edge of a window, a side mirror, the clear curved area left by a windshield wiper - these markers situate the viewer on the journey Woods is on - we are taken inside the vehicle and shown the vignettes that catch Woods’ eye. The paintings reclaim that point in time, explore its detail, and unearth its emotional content. Woods’ work freezes and compresses a moment of everyday life; then elongates and decelerates it and in so doing, reveals its accompanying emotional weight: its anticipation, reflection, isolation, and longing. Woods is coaxing us to recognize the transcendent experiences offered by the most mundane or ordinary surroundings of our daily lives. Karen Woods was born in Seattle, WA, in 1963. She received her BFA from the California College of the Arts (Oakland, CA) in 1987 with additional studies at California Polytechnic State University and Studio Art Centers International, Florence, Italy. Her paintings have been exhibited throughout the United States with solo exhibitions in Los Angeles, New York, and Boston, among others, and her work has been published in New American Paintings, American Art Collector, art ltd, Artweek, Western Art & Architecture, Fine Art Connoisseur, and the Idaho Statesmen. Woods’ paintings are included the public collections of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, UK, James Castle...

Whilst returning home from France, I completed a personal goal, which I hope will rid me entirely of my fear of flying. I sat in the window seat. Just as we approached the channel...

This painting was based on one of many graphite sketches I completed over the period of two months. The piece is special to me because it has a sculptural feel to it, much different ...

Paul Manes was born May 4, 1948 in Austin, Texas. He began his professional career in New York City in the early 1980s. His art has been widely exhibited in America and Europe and hi...