October 24, 2019:

Demo by Karen Knutson – Contemporary Paintings in Acrylic

Karen Knutson began by saying that she learned from “the best marketers ever,” Robert Burridge and Karlyn Holman – ”Start right out with your pitch.”

She told us about a video that she recently produced which demonstrates one of her mixed media techniques using watercolor and charcoal powder. She also has a book available, “30 Paintings in 30 Days.”

Karen began demonstrating the process which she calls “Painting in the style of Gustav Klimt.”

Using Strathmore Aquarius 2 paper (80 pound) she coats the paper with Liquitex Matte Medium and creates texture with a flexible rubber shaper and stiff brushes. She then squirts water over all to spread the medium.

Then, using a heavy bodied yellow acrylic she swirled the paint in a heart-shaped pattern, adding blue dots, lots of blue-green, orange and raw umber scraping them together with a credit card.

She “blessed” it with water drops and let the paint dry for about 5 minutes. Karen tries to create pathways of light, lifting color to reveal areas of white. She always keeps in mind the principles – Repetition, Variation, and Dominance Karen enlarges the drawing of her figures to the actual size of the paper and transfers the image using carbon paper. Then, with rubbing alcohol, she wipes out a light pathway, and negative paints around the figure with a diluted transparent color.

The next step is to outline the figures with permanent marker. The final stages involve blocking in black areas, painting over, lifting, spraying with alcohol and water.

Karen lives up to the mantra of one of her favorite artists, Mary Todd Beam, whose book title says it all, “Celebrate Your Creative Self.”