Karen Weihs Fine Art
Residing now in Venice Beach, Florida, Karen Weihs is focusing on mentoring emerging artists and special art competitions and exhibitions. She says, now it is her time to be dedicated to spending quality time with everything in life she enjoys. Her work is enabled for sale by appointment in her Venice home.
Karen paints mostly with the palette knife applying pigment in lush impasto layers interspersed with thin glazes that enrich colors and result in canvases that glow with mysterious light and form.
Her realistic works radiate an otherworldly ambience of shimmering colors and swirling shapes, representing whatever subject matter the viewer chooses to see. Drifting clouds reflected in a lake, a distant skyline of forest or city, grey fog rolling across the horizon are these forms real or imagined Weihs galvanizes her audience’s natural curiosity with compositions that border between abstraction and landscape. She alludes to the familiar without telling the story. Her abstracted representational subject matter is deliberately simplified to capture the “idea” or essence of a place, not the reality of it. Weihs invents each new journey of creation by trusting her intuition completely and by following wherever her hand and intuition lead inside the very textural composition. Like memories that bubble to the surface of the mind, the images her palette knife creates as it carves, smoothes, jabs and dances across the surface eventually coalesce to form a holistic picture.
She is also an extraordinary teacher known for giving permission to students to explore their creativity, encouraging them to make marks with joyful abandon and experiment with tools and techniques that lead to individual style. Weihs studied with LaMar Dodd at the University of Georgia earning a BFA degree. His repetitive, coloristic modern style was great influence.
Memberships: Salmagundi Art Club in NYC and The American Women Artists Society
“The magic happens and draws me in, and I find myself driven to capture and paint those responses over and over again. It’s deeply gratifying. This erudition has earned me a confidence in looking for the cutting edge of paint technique, ever evolving to a higher standard. Usually, the viewer can find something of the subject matter to relate to. This process allows me to tackle a subject that may or may not appear as my eyes see, painting the paint.” – Karen Weihs
Karen was born and raised in Charleston, SC, raised two sons and worked with and sold 7 restaurants there with her restauranteur husband, Chris Weihs, also a European trained professional chef. They lived in western NC after selling the businesses and recently moved to Venice, FL to spend more time with family.
Allusions of Ambience is a unique art performance program and exhibition developed by acclaimed contemporary artist Karen Weihs. In her popular audience demonstrations, Weihs reveals her innovative and intuitive painting technique that is, to quickly create imaginary landscapes defined by ethereal atmospheres and palpable textures.
“The colors of my life are bountiful and bold. The purple glow of indigo, the gleam of green and gold. The splendor of a sunrise, the dazzle of a flame. The glory of a rainbow, will put ’em all to shame. No quiet browns or grays, I’ll take my days instead. And fill them ’till they overflow, with rose and cherry red. And should this sunlit world, grow dark one day. The colors of my life, will leave a shining light To show the way. No quiet browns and grays, I’ll take my days instead And fill them. The colors of my life, will leave a shining light. The colors of my life will light the way.”
Karen Weihs paintings are represented by:
Chasen Gallery
1830 S. Osprey Ave.
Sarasota, FL
Chasen Gallery II
Westfield Siesta Key Mall
3501 S. Tamiami Trail
Sarasota, FL
Her work is on display and sold at Collectors Gallery and Framery in downtown Venice.
Modern Artist also is showing in other fine art galleries: Grand Bohemian Gallery, Asheville, NC, Joan Anderson Interiors, Cashiers, NC.
You can contact Karen Weihs directly to see her work.
Website:
828-226-4024
Karen Weihs Fine Art Facebook Page
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