Karen Kristin
Artist’s Statement:
Throughout most of my artistic career I have focused on nature -- especially the sky -- as either subject or as background for symbolic or mystical paintings. For a decade, while I lived and worked in Hollywood in the 70’s and 80’s, my realistic sky paintings provided temporary backdrops for television and magazine commercials, films, and rock videos.
After I left the Los Angeles area in 1988, I switched to a more enduring art form, wall and ceiling murals. During this phase of my career, the large-scale sky murals I produced provided backgrounds to enhance the architectural spaces in restaurants, hotels, shopping malls and casinos.
More recently, I have revisited landscape painting using oils, a medium left behind in my late teens when I discovered the mutable and mobile nature of the acrylic medium. The Southwestern environment, wherein I now reside, has no doubt inspired my return to landscape as subject. These days, I set off to local spots to paint direct from nature in the plein air style or else I incorporate the impressions received outdoors into studio paintings.
Artist's Biography:
Karen Kristin was born and grew up in Los Angeles, California, the youngest of four children in a musical family. She knew from the start that she wanted to be a visual artist. Always a dreamer, she spent hours lying on the ground looking up at the sky imagining animals in the changing shapes of the clouds above, sculpting the flower beds into a mini environment for her ranch set toys, or lodged in a corner of the house making drawings and paintings.
Karen has lived her entire life as an artist -- drawing, painting, and making sculpture. She was formally educated in California at Art Center College of Design and at UCLA, yet feels that her most influential training has come from life experience.
In 1978, Karen began working in Hollywood as a scenic artist, painting backdrops for film and television; within 10 years she developed her reputation as "The Sky Lady." Upon leaving Hollywood to live in Northern New Mexico in 1988, she switched from backdrop painting to mural painting and established SKY ART Karen Kristin, Inc. For her company’s first big project, she stepped into the arena of the casino industry in Las Vegas to paint the overhead skies (92,000 square feet of them!) at The Forum Shops at Caesars. This project led to many more of similar size and scope, and in 1998, she was offered another high profile opportunity in Las Vegas at The Venetian Grand Canal Shoppes. There, she and her SKY ART team designed and painted 105,000 feet of skies over buildings and canals designed to replicate Saint Mark’s Square and other Venice street scenes.
Upon completion of the Venetian murals, Karen journeyed to China and Tibet to be renewed by the spiritual, high mountain environment. In years since, sky painting has taken her to South Africa and India to provide murals for museums and temples.
In 2007, after hundreds of sky painting projects, Karen and the SKY ART team took on the most challenging project in her company’s history. They traveled to Asia to live and work for nine months while painting 252,000 square feet of sky ceilings over the shopping mall and canals at The Venetian Macao Resort Hotel.
Throughout her traveling years painting large-scale sky murals, Karen continued to paint on canvas in her studio. Much of the work from these years presents the sky as the singular subject. With these paintings, her intention is most often to provide the viewer with a background of calm and beauty against which meditation and insight can occur. Other pieces present the sky in combination with symbolic or mystical imagery; these are meant to evoke emotional response and are more challenging to the viewer.
After 30 intense years of large-scale sky painting, Karen now plans to concentrate on smaller and more personal creative projects. She intends to return to an exploration in paint of all the elements of nature – fire, earth, air, and water, and of the creatures that inhabit these realms.
Karen Kristin has been widely recognized for her work and honored by several organizations. See more of Karen's work at www.skyartkarenkristin.com.
Throughout most of my artistic career I have focused on nature -- especially the sky -- as either subject or as background for symbolic or mystical paintings. For a decade, while I lived and worked in Hollywood in the 70’s and 80’s, my realistic sky paintings provided temporary backdrops for television and magazine commercials, films, and rock videos.
After I left the Los Angeles area in 1988, I switched to a more enduring art form, wall and ceiling murals. During this phase of my career, the large-scale sky murals I produced provided backgrounds to enhance the architectural spaces in restaurants, hotels, shopping malls and casinos.
More recently, I have revisited landscape painting using oils, a medium left behind in my late teens when I discovered the mutable and mobile nature of the acrylic medium. The Southwestern environment, wherein I now reside, has no doubt inspired my return to landscape as subject. These days, I set off to local spots to paint direct from nature in the plein air style or else I incorporate the impressions received outdoors into studio paintings.
Artist's Biography:
Karen Kristin was born and grew up in Los Angeles, California, the youngest of four children in a musical family. She knew from the start that she wanted to be a visual artist. Always a dreamer, she spent hours lying on the ground looking up at the sky imagining animals in the changing shapes of the clouds above, sculpting the flower beds into a mini environment for her ranch set toys, or lodged in a corner of the house making drawings and paintings.
Karen has lived her entire life as an artist -- drawing, painting, and making sculpture. She was formally educated in California at Art Center College of Design and at UCLA, yet feels that her most influential training has come from life experience.
In 1978, Karen began working in Hollywood as a scenic artist, painting backdrops for film and television; within 10 years she developed her reputation as "The Sky Lady." Upon leaving Hollywood to live in Northern New Mexico in 1988, she switched from backdrop painting to mural painting and established SKY ART Karen Kristin, Inc. For her company’s first big project, she stepped into the arena of the casino industry in Las Vegas to paint the overhead skies (92,000 square feet of them!) at The Forum Shops at Caesars. This project led to many more of similar size and scope, and in 1998, she was offered another high profile opportunity in Las Vegas at The Venetian Grand Canal Shoppes. There, she and her SKY ART team designed and painted 105,000 feet of skies over buildings and canals designed to replicate Saint Mark’s Square and other Venice street scenes.
Upon completion of the Venetian murals, Karen journeyed to China and Tibet to be renewed by the spiritual, high mountain environment. In years since, sky painting has taken her to South Africa and India to provide murals for museums and temples.
In 2007, after hundreds of sky painting projects, Karen and the SKY ART team took on the most challenging project in her company’s history. They traveled to Asia to live and work for nine months while painting 252,000 square feet of sky ceilings over the shopping mall and canals at The Venetian Macao Resort Hotel.
Throughout her traveling years painting large-scale sky murals, Karen continued to paint on canvas in her studio. Much of the work from these years presents the sky as the singular subject. With these paintings, her intention is most often to provide the viewer with a background of calm and beauty against which meditation and insight can occur. Other pieces present the sky in combination with symbolic or mystical imagery; these are meant to evoke emotional response and are more challenging to the viewer.
After 30 intense years of large-scale sky painting, Karen now plans to concentrate on smaller and more personal creative projects. She intends to return to an exploration in paint of all the elements of nature – fire, earth, air, and water, and of the creatures that inhabit these realms.
Karen Kristin has been widely recognized for her work and honored by several organizations. See more of Karen's work at www.skyartkarenkristin.com.
