First Blush Painting by Karen Rieger

Born in Toronto, Karen Rieger grew up in an artistic environment. Her mother was always engaged in creative projects around the home and her father was a talented artist who received his classical training in Czechoslovakia.

 Although surrounded by this creativity, Karen came late to her artistic pursuits. In her early twenties while studying English Literature at the University of Toronto, she found herself much happier doodling than writing essays. She went on to spend two years studying at The Art Centre before completing her art education at the Ontario College of Art.

Since then she has shown widely in numerous galleries throughout North America.

Karen is currently represented by galleries in Canada and the United States. She continues to paint and reside in Toronto where she lives with her husband and fellow artist.

Colour is of prime importance, evoking mood, sensuality and a sense of beauty. Relatively flat areas of colour are used to emphasize the formal qualities in each painting and there is no attempt to create the illusion of reality.

A rich pastiche is found within the paintings, comprised of diverse inspirations such as the avant-garde movements of the 19th and 20th centuries, European textile patterns and sources derived from my immediate environment. A dialogue between my imagination and the past informs the work. The painting begins to reveal itself as the brush interacts with the canvas. There are no preparatory sketches. The process of creating the painting is intuitive and remains exciting and spontaneous.

The faces are derived from my imagination, the features generalized to suggest universality rather than a specific person. Inspiration for the still life paintings may come from a bouquet on my table, or many times they simply emerge luxuriantly and fully formed onto the canvas.

In Karen's landscape series, she has painted scenes inspired by both the countryside and the city’s verdant backyards, all filtered through imagination and an emotional response translated into lively brushstrokes and an abundance of colour.

Her childhood summers were filled with weekend explorations of the countryside north of Toronto and beyond. These early road trips, rich with images, fed her internal visual archive. Viewed from the car window, an ever-changing vista rolled before her eyes.

Walks through woods immersed her in dark shadows where rays of glinting light pushed their way between boughs, dappling the forest floor, luminous and redolent of earth.

Impasto strokes of acrylic are laid upon watercolour like underglazes and the charcoal marks of the initial drawing are sometimes revealed.

The paintings depict the energetic essence of landscape and capture the passion for the natural world that she was introduced to as a child, that held a kind of magic and an ethereal quality that still resonates strongly within her.

• Nationality: CANADA
• Date of birth : unknown date
• Artistic domains: Works by professional artists,
• Groups: Professional Artist Contemporary Canadian Artists