Karen Marston
Karen Marston is a painter living and working in Brooklyn, NY. Her work has been seen in several solo exhibitions in New York City, most recently Fire Season in early 2021, and Harbingers in 2018, both at the Owen James Gallery in SoHo. Others include: 2017’s To Embrace the Whole Sky with the Mind, at Station Independent Projects on the Lower East Side, Demeter’s Wrath in 2016 at Owen James and Storm Watch, New Paintings in 2012 at Storefront Bushwick, in addition to earlier solos at Dam Stuhltrager Gallery, Cheryl McGinnis Gallery and the Taller Broicua Gallery at the Julia de Brugos Cultural Center, as well as participating in numerous group exhibitions. Originally from California, she earned her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and participated in the A.I.C.A. New York Studio Program.
For ten years I have been painting natural and not so natural disasters—and the blurring line between them wrought by climate change. These images have become an external manifestation of an apprehensive mood fed by a growing litany of frightening catastrophes, a conflation of many destructive crises currently consuming the world. This exploration includes forest fires, hurricanes, tornados, volcanoes, bleaching coral reefs and melting icebergs. I am mesmerized by the power of these elemental threats, bigger and more frightening than ever, amplified rather than tamed by modernity.
