Description

Seduction + Humble Beauty
My paintings have an architectural sensibility. I study the way things are
connected and organized. I am interested in how we experience things and
create memories. My formal training as an architect creates a visual filter that
enables me to see these relationships in places often deemed mundane.

I am a maker. I work with my hands.
I am committed to the authenticity of my work in oil on canvas. Oil paint is tactile
and primal. The rich smell of the grease, the ability to move it, and alter it with
brushes, tools, or fingers. Like painting with lipstick.

Loose Precision
I immerse myself, rubbing and layering color and line to add texture and find the
storied patina through process itself. I often work big.. I am interested in space
and experience. I am a maker of space, and also a dreamer.

New Freedom
My new work is abstract, dropping references to actual things and reining the
passion I feel for the rest of it; organization of the parts, color, space, layers,
movement, scale, line, negative space, and contrast. I am more involved with
the layers of information, some blurred and some precise, some veiled, some
coming through. My architect’s brain stays with me as I respond to feeling,
intuition, memory, and experience. Previously fearful of dropping realistic
references, I am astonished at how tied to my architectural muscle memory my
abstract work is. It has been an unexpected but long-awaited transformation.
Karen JS Tashjian
August / 2024

Karen J.S. Tashjian received a BS in Design, Fine Arts, and Architecture, and a
B.Arch. in Architecture, both from Cornell University. She has been painting
seriously for about 24 years and currently paints full-time. In the past, she
practiced architecture in NYS as a licensed architect, and taught Architectural
Design Studio at the University at Buffalo for 18 years. She has a painting studio
in Buffalo in the industrial Niagara Frontier Food Terminal., and also one at
home, a passive solar residence which she designed.
“My goal is to live life as an artist, directed by my creativity and by my moral
compass. I aspire to live an impassioned life that is proactive and committed to
the things that I value.”

Please note:

Your painting will be able to be picked up at the end of the exhibition after October 18th at 78 Allen Street.