Karen Silve
Karen Silve was born in Springfield, IL. Her mother, who is the daughter of an artist and a French chef, exposed Silve and her three siblings to art through visits to museums and classes. Silve’s family moved a number of times during her childhood, finally settling in Tuscaloosa, AL. She was involved with art through high school and went on to receive a BFA from the University of Alabama, whose painting faculty, including the Italian artist Alvin Sella, had a strong abstract orientation. A formative experience, especially for her color sense, was the summer Silve spent painting the landscape in France at the Leo Marchutz School in Aix-in-Provence. She currently maintains studios both in Portland, OR and in the south of France.
As an undergraduate, Silve developed an interest in Abstract Expressionist and Fauvist painting, and they informed her early figurative abstractions. She studied in the graduate painting and design programs at the University of Denver, creating abstract work that was inspired by the landscape, and by the color lessons she learned in France. Later, the Abstract Expressionist painters Willem de Kooning and Joan Mitchell, and the German artist Gerhard Richter became important influences on her work.
Silve has exhibited her work extensively in solo exhibitions including at the Portland Performing Arts Center, the Forsyth Center Gallery at Texas A&M University, the Visual Art Center of Northwest Florida, the Tuscaloosa Performing Arts Center and the West Linn Public Library in Oregon. Group exhibitions include those at the JemisonCarnegie Heritage Museum, Talledega AL, and the Art in Embassies Program, Doha, Qatar.