Featured Artist of the month
Each month we feature one artist from our Community Artists page here on our website, in our monthly newsletter, on Instagram, and on Facebook. We will also host an artist’s talk with them over Zoom so our audience can get to know them better. Check back at the beginning of each month for a new artist to learn about. And view artists from past months here.
August 2025: Karen Silve
We are very happy to introduce Karen Silve as our Featured Artist of August! Read on to learn about Karen and to see a selection of her artwork. And mark your calendars for an artist’s talk on Zoom with Karen on Thursday, August 28th at 12:30 PM Eastern Time. Register ahead of time on Zoom by clicking here.
About the Artist
Karen Silve, born 1969 in Illinois, is based in Portland, Oregon, U.S. and Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, France.
Her paintings are distillations of her emotions, impressions, and experiences in the realms of nature and culture. Surrounded by the scenic beauty of the Pacific Northwest and the countryside around her family home in Provence, France, she layers color and gesture into abstracted narratives—composites of visuals, sensations, and memories, which coalesce in a non-literal pictorial space. Often, the paintings create a bridge between counterpoints, such as ambiguity/clarity, calmness/tension, and exterior/interior—resulting in a deep sense of harmony and resolution.
Placing the artist in the lineages of Cézanne, Monet, de Kooning, and Mitchell, renowned critic Peter Frank adds: “For all their brushy, dripping exuberance, Silve’s paintings are composed with an almost architectural rigor that emulates nature’s own glorious rhythms.”
This heightened sensitivity to the natural world may stem from her early work in figuration and landscape. Initially she studied under Alvin Sella, an Italian abstract painter and professor at the University of Alabama. She focused on interplaying emotions with her subjects. However, it was as an emerging artist, studying in Aix-en-Provence, France at the Leo Marchutz School of Painting & Drawing, that she found her true passion for painting, color, and nature, as well as the work sensibility that would power her through the years to come.
Since those formative years, she has exhibited in museums, art centers, and galleries in New York City, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Miami, Santa Fe, San Diego, and Sun Valley, as well as France, the United Kingdom, Venice, Qatar, Brunei, and Mexico, where her work is included in the permanent collection of the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey. The recipient of prestigious grants and residencies, she has won critical praise in publications such as The Washington Post (“Her free hand and lively spattering recall Jackson Pollock... and parallel the technique of Gerhard Richter”) and from ARTnews and New York Times contributor Ann Landi (“Because many of her works are human-scaled, we relate to them with our own bodies and enter into her dialogue with materials”).
Artist's statement
Nature is my inspiration, whether driving through the South of France, hiking in the Pacific Northwest, or meditating while watching the surface of a river. Sometimes my work comes directly from interacting with and responding to nature. Other times it’s a search for resolution.
Emotions are my subject. My work doesn’t encompass a scene of nature, but rather natural elements. In one painting I may incorporate colors and marks inspired from hiking in the Pacific Northwest and swimming in the Mediterranean sea at the same time. My images are not real nor imaginary spaces, but rather expressions from multiple environments that create an emotion.
Some of my paintings are on multiple canvases to create narratives or dialogs. My narrative paintings encompass a journey of emotions. In my dialog paintings I strive to create a harmony from our difference; bridging our similarities with the use of color and marks.
The process of painting brings me clarity and a voice for expressing myself. In search for honesty in my work, I paint from the gut and allow my subconscious to reveal itself.
Selected Work
Follow
Website: www.karensilve.com
Instagram: @karen_silve
Artist’s Talk on Zoom
Mark your calendars for an artist’s talk on Zoom with Karen on Thursday, August 28th at 12:30 PM Eastern Time. Register ahead of time on Zoom by clicking here.
Previous Featured Artists
To view featured artists from past months, click here.
June/July 2025: Mary Hamilton
May 2025: Kayla Noble
April 2025: Michèle Hénot Gasparach
March 2025: Ciara Ruddock
February 2025: Barry Hart
December 2024/January 2025: Alan Roberts
November 2024: Ben Haggard
October 2024: Amelia Myre
September 2024: Becky Hagenston
August 2024: Paul Umbarger
June/July 2024: Featured Exhibition in Aix-en-Provence
May 2024: Sharon Rawlins
April 2024: Kate Butler
March 2024: Pauline Bétrancourt
February 2024: Jenna Grotelueschen
January 2024: Mary Leone Duffy
December 2023: Elizabeth Ivers
November 2023: Cole Carothers
October 2023: Grace Darden
September 2023: King David
August 2023: Chris Coffey
July 2023: Jim Toub
June 2023: Jennifer Neel
May 2023: Jan Brogan
April 2023: Sophia Hall
March 2023: Lucy Clare Spooner
February 2023: Samantha Van Heest
December 2022: Hilary Stein
November 2022: Nick Cruz Velleman
October 2022: Miranda Blas
September 2022: Samuel Bjorklund