Painting for me is to find a sense of home. My best work travels beyond myself as each layer of colour and mark leads to another. I want to capture an atmosphere, a sense of place. In this process I find grounding, joy, light and life.
I lose myself in the process of painting, the direct experience of the Australian landscape becomes imagined and re-imagined in my studio process. In painting, colour and the vibrations of light speak of our connection to the landscape, this sacred and spiritual space we all belong to.
I am primarily concerned with the ways in which landscape painting can be seen as a metaphor to express the myriad of human emotion; our unique sense of longing, loss, fear, hope and desire for connection.
I enjoy beginning my painting process en plein-air through observation and perception, then working intuitively through layering and mark making back at the studio; uncovering the journey each painting has within it. I’m ultimately seeking a truth, a raw honesty and a perceived atmosphere in the work.
The sky, sea and land changing in light, the forces of weather and nature are my constant source of inspiration. My concern for a more sustainable use of materials has led me to develop a practice using oil paint that is solvent free.
Karen Anne Parsons is a Welsh artist, living and working in Bayside Melbourne, Australia. Karen migrated to Melbourne in 2005 with her husband and her four year old twin boys. Karen found solace at the loss of her geographical connection to close family and friends through returning to her first love of painting.
Settling in Victoria, Bayside, she began developing her unique “painting language” as an emotional and spiritual response to the colour and unique beauty of the Australian natural environment.