Scapegrace: Paintings by Karen Greenstreet

About

Karen Greenstreet's professional history is diverse and bi-national: she is an English lawyer who for many years served as a U.S. university professor, corporate consultant and executive coach. She is the author/co- author of four books on architectural law and professional development, and holds a PhD in political science.

Currently she lives in the United States, but grew up in Gloucestershire, returning frequently to the Cotswolds. She has recently become an Associate Academic with the School of Creative Arts at the University of Gloucestershire.

Karen began painting in earnest while living in Paris in 2017. She uses acrylics with ceramic and glass media on canvas to capture abstract scapes: landscapes, townscapes, and mindscapes. Intense colouration, touchable textures, curves, and circular motifs characterise much of her work, which ranges from small studies to larger diptychs and triptychs of abstract rural, mountain, and urban imagination.

Recently Karen has created several multi-paneled works, each of which explores the concept of connection through fragmentation. This approach is designed to capture physical complexity and reflect emotional intensity by inviting the viewer to focus on individual panels, on discrete combinations of panels, and ultimately on the artwork in its entirety, the composite representing a greater whole than the parts.

Generally, her abstract paintings are untitled to avoid interfering with a viewer's authentic personal connection with her work. Infinity, the largest and earliest piece in the show is an exception.

Infinity, has grown to a vast 25-panel landscape – the result of Karen's intense curiosity to discover what lies beyond the edges of each panel. Infinity is sometimes exhibited on the floor of a show, drawing remarks from visitors that this atypical perspective gives them a sense of mentally walking through the space as they engage with the mood and atmosphere of the work.

In addition to the Sixteen Gallery show, Karen has recently exhibited her work in Grove Gallery and The Couture, Milwaukee and she is scheduled to exhibit at the North Wall Gallery in Oxford.