INTRODUCTION

Born in Liverpool, Karen grew up in Suffolk and is now living in rural Oxfordshire. She graduated from Oxford Brookes University with a First Class Honours Degree in Fine Art in 2004 and is a member of Magdalen Road Studios in Oxford.

NEWS

Turbine House, Reading May 2010

This residency has enabled me to build up a small archive of drawings that connect me to the place. They reflect my encounter of working in the building and its immediate surroundings.

I became interested in the quiet activities happening in the dark corners and spaces, of the decaying sense of time reflected in these moments. It was the heavily discoloured, abandoned cob- webs, the splashes of guano on the windowpanes, the gently crumbling brick dust captured by a silken net.

All this with an awareness of the surging power of water beneath, presenting me with a metaphor of the natural life cycle.

As a painter I could also not ignore the brilliant blues inside and outside the building. As a starting point I have made my own ‘memorials’ to the colour using found flakes of paint. They may act as starting points to my own paintings.

www.readingmuseum.org.uk/galleries/blakes