GALLERY
Welcome to my Online Gallery showcasing my artwork - please note that all of the originals on this page have been sold.
I have included Artist Statements for several featured works in each Category.
For additional Artist Statements, or for questions about purchases including wholesale orders, please feel fee to CONTACT ME.
For AVAILABLE ORIGINALS, ART CARDS, and PRINTS please go to SHOP.
B I R D S
Born Again
(40" x 16", acrylic and collaged papers on canvas)
The pursuit of understanding one's world and the ways we belong in it are complex and, at times, confusing or even surprising. Along the way, changes bring us to a new way of being that are often imperceptible, and yet, here we find ourselves, trying to figure out how we ended up in a place that suddenly feels this unexpected and foreign.
In these times of upheaval, the things we thought were secure and reliable no longer seem this way. Interrogation is good. Skepticism is necessary. But we must still find places to land. I turn to the ones who have overcome obstacles and upheaval time and time again. The small but tenacious house sparrow is one such teacher. So, little sparrows, I applaud you! Build your nests in those abandoned spaces that others have deemed unlivable. Inhabit and begin again, amidst the rubble, amidst the noise and chaos, in the face of uncertainty. Nest, lay your eggs, raise your young, squabble and make your opinions loud and clear. You are my tutors.
We are Kin (Who Gets to Look Away?)
(48" x 36", acrylic on canvas)
Who looks; who looks away? Who belongs and who does not? A group of great blue herons offers a metaphor for our current times as we give air to our narratives of politics, religion, war and peace. The direction of our attention shapes our inner landscapes, leans us toward one or the other, gives us words that in turn shape realities. And yet, we are all inescapably part of something larger. For better or worse, our lives are intertwined. Regardless of the direction of our gaze, then, I am challenged to imagine a world where we belong to one another. I want to think that it is possible to work toward mutual flourishing.
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H O R S E S
Beautiful Blinders
(18" x 24", acrylic, wallpaper and 3D paper flowers on canvas)
Whether considering our personal lifestyles, our family cultures, or our religious and political worldviews, we see through lenses. We see in particular ways, shaped by our beliefs and life experiences. Especially now, in our current political climate, I believe that our first work is to acknowledge these lenses. But it is hard to do! How many times have I said, I don’t even know what I don’t know.
Sometimes we must work hard to remove them; sometimes they provide blessed reprieve from a clamorous world for a necessary length of time, but at the very least, let us admit we have them.
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T R E E S
Tree and Wall Begin the Arduous Task of Trying to Understand Each Other
(15" x 30", acrylic, inks on layers of canvas)
This is, very simply, how I see our society. In actual practice, conversations usually do not dive into anything arduous at all as we carefully skirt around tricky topics. Curiously, this piece caught the eye of a fellow community member who, fair to say, embraces very different politics than I do. She purchased it. The day she came to pick it up, we had a most candid and civil conversation. I was filled with admiration and new respect for her.
I Hear with an Accent
(48" x 36", acrylic, book pages, collaged handwriting and goldleaf on birch panel)
The four, small blocks of paper collaged on the left-hand side of this piece feature my dad's handwriting. Written in Frisian, his native language, the words blur into calligraphic marks through the ancient tree and off the picture plane. It is a tribute to my family heritage and an exploration of its influences. What are the worldviews I inherited? What of colonialism and my place of privilege in today’s global culture? What is written into my genetics and what are chosen beliefs?
To be sure, it has been a bit like the upheaval and relief of a big, personal yard sale. I get to ask, what do I embrace because it is good and what do I let go of? What do I hold on to for now because it needs further exploration and I simply don’t have the energy?
Notice, though, the enduring presence of the tree. There are rhythms and seasons. A time to actively engage; a time to rest. Solace comes from knowing that growth occurs even in the quiet bittersweet.
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H U M A N I T Y
My Three Companions
(30"x 40", acrylic on birch panel)
As the world cracks and becomes strangely unfamiliar to me, I see that I, too,have become more complex and unrecognizable; a singular figure to stand as aself-portrait felt insufficient.
The figure on the right, Lament, is that deep part of me that knows sorrow and grief. Lament has become a companion on life’s road. I’m no longer so afraid of her. In fact, there is a something expansive and releasing about inviting her home to the table.
The central figure is a complex one. She is all Upheaval and Interrogation brought on by the pandemic; she is Grief and Overwhelm over our changing climate; she is the Indignation and Outrage over systemic injustices that enable genocide. Weltschmerz. As she does the work to invite all these parts into dialogue, both external and internal, she holds a mirror to herself. Now what? Who is this emerging person? Will she be consumed?
The third figure leans into the tumultuous body of her anguished self. She is Tenderness. She holds space for all of it, recognizing how deeply sacred this season is which cannot be rushed. All three are one.
In the Field of Uncertainty
(50" x 24", diptych, acrylic on canvas)
Certainty is a myth. Yet however much I call out its deception, certainty doggedly pulls me in with its promise of security and camaraderie. It suggests insight and wisdom, assures me that I am on the right team, allows me to avoid the discomfort of that yawning liminality poets write about. It can be especially awkward when my uncertainty walks flank-to-flank alongside those who do not question or doubt.
One day, a Blackfoot Elder shared with me about the presence of shadows. Pay attention, he said, to the gift of your shadow that comes from Natoosi, Brother Sun, for he has things to teach you. You are never alone; your shadow will accompany you.
Our shadows shift as the sun journeys across the sky and distort into almost unrecognizable forms. They merge and undulate with the contours of the ground. So, here I am, big-footed, tiny-headed, see-through and elongated as my shadow responds to the land it moves across. Paying attention. Being curious. Doing my best to embrace my deep uncertainties with a sense of self-deprecating humour despite my overly earnest self.
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B O A T S
In Search of a New Narrative
(30" x 24", acrylic on black-framed canvas)
Everyone of us will encounter threshold moments in our lives where we are offered a new view of things. It might be personal; it might be global. Whatever the scale, these threshold moments ask something of us. We all carry inherited belief systems based on family and societal narratives. We have been taught to embrace certain institutions as good, as reliable and thus, to be defended. It takes courage to lean into doubt. We risk upheaval and the inner chaos that comes with a loss of certainty. Crossing such boundaries can result in remarkable loneliness.
This piece is an exploration of such a season. Common house sparrows fly over three derelict fishing vessels: the institutional church, education systems, government. Events in the last few years have exposed complicity, deficiencies and equivocation in even our most sacred spaces. They ask us to rethink what we once knew. I welcome courage in this piece. I welcome a new view as I take flight; and I am heartened to know I am not entirely alone even as the landscape changes and becomes increasingly unfamiliar, there are others on this journey.
Practice Resurrection
(48" x 24", acrylic on canvas)
This image was inspired by Wendell Berry's poem, “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front”. It is a gorgeous poem, particularly these lines:
....ask the questions that have no answers
invest in the millennium
plant sequoias
say that your main crop is the forest you did not plant
that you will not live to harvest...
put your faith in the 2" of humus that will build under trees every thousand years...
practice resurrection.
The boat, a metaphor for journey, bears a thriving seedling gently entwined with a golden cord that holds it upright. We grow gardens. We bear children. We bake bread and paint images. We rise, we fall and rise again -- from sorrow, from sickness and ashes, even from the dark rhythms of sleep. We somehow, wondrously, experience a rising up, a resurrection.
We could refuse to get up. We could succumb.
Living generatively is work, like moving through a wall as impermeable as cinderblocks. But not always. This is the unassuming miracle of life, imperceptive to the eye. Seedlings grow through a crack in the wall. We have our dialogues with despair and fear, yes, and then find ourselves looking for the cracks.
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T H E L A N D
Thousand Cuts
(40" x 30", acrylic, ink and topographical map fragments on canvas)
A consideration of backcountry usage from an elk calf’s point of view. Map fragments break up the sky, their boundary lines imprinting the air itself. This young keystone species quickly learns which travel routes are safe and which are not.
Protected wildlife travel corridors through mountain terrain make a great difference in the thriving of all its inhabitants: elk, deer, bear, wolves, and mountain bikers, too.
Arpeggios With Flowers
(36" x 60", acrylic and collaged wallpaper & table napkins on canvas)
Several years ago, I worked alongside a Blackfoot Elder and a university researcher at an elementary school as artist-in-residence. Together, we guided students’ connection to the land through stories and artmaking.
It was a beautiful, yet disquieting experience for me. The Elder taught that a sense of place is shaped as you listen and understand your relationship to all the relatives who shared the land with you, wind, birds, the moose, the creek, spiders...
In this piece, music and flowers provide visual metaphors for Home, for Place. As arpeggios are foundational to all melody, so the household is foundational to every child’s way of being in society. Here, the geometric lines of a modern home overlap within the traditional shape of First Peoples as though in dialogue each other. As I painted I made space to reimagine my relationship to na’a, the land, Mother Earth—me, a lover of wilderness, yet a latecomer to this way of knowing. I have much to learn.
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Karen Tamminga-Paton Gallery
7626 17th Ave
Coleman, AB
Crowsnest Pass
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