Karen Wade

Karen's work remains primarily abstract but for all that the viewer's own emotional response is integral, key influences can be discerned in her painting. Her work is visibly of Cornwall and its coastline - the sea, granite rocks and boulders, harbour walls and Celtic crosses of the county in which Karen was raised. At the same time as exuding an extraordinary seneity and harmony, Karen's work explores the distance and/or connections between things - the space where the land meets the sea, the edge of things, the subtle gap between stone and shore. As such, it is visibly 'Cornish' - and a remarkable demonstration of resilience, inner strength and serenity. Hence, Still. Karen's work is of the still points in life, in art, in the landscape, the sea and Cornwall.

Karen Wade was born in Woking but was brought up near Charlestown on Cornwall’s south coast. She attended both Falmouth and Dartington arts colleges before completing a degree in Visual Arts at Oxford Polytechnic.

Upon graduating, Karen returned to the south west and worked as a graphic design artist on both a freelance and employed basis in Exeter before managing various bookshops. She is married to the writer and journalist Alex Wade, with whom she lived for some fifteen years in London and the Cotswolds before returning to Cornwall in 2006.

Karen had always painted but having had two children she put her artistic career on hold. However, as her boys grew older she began to paint again in earnest and had her first solo show at the Anderson Gallery in Burford, Oxfordshire in 2004. This was followed by two shows at the Yew Tree Gallery in Morvah, West Penwith, in 2005 and 2006. Since moving back to Cornwall, Karen has shown at HiltonYoung in Chapel Street, Penzance (2008). She currently sells her work through Stoneman Graphics and the Tyler Gallery in Mousehole - with both of whom she has shows booked for 2009 – and has also contributed work to Badcocks’ ‘Precious Lives’ appeal for Christmas 2008.

Karen’s paintings are abstract collages of paper and acrylic, which she uses to explore themes of colour and balance within the restricted form of the canvas. She creates dense layers of intense and subtle colours, which appear to float in space but whose ultimately sculptural form reveals a discernibly Cornish influence. The coastline, the seemingly omnipresent sea, the granite rocks and boulders, harbour walls and Celtic crosses of the county in which Karen was raised all play their part in her work. At the same time as exuding an extraordinary serenity and harmony, Karen’s work also explores the distance and/or connections between things - the space where the land meets the sea, the edge of things, the subtle gap between stone and shore.

Karen lives in Porthcurno, where she has a studio, with her husband and sons.