Karen Camkin

Integral to Karen Camkin’s process is the act of slow looking and finding interest in everyday observations of nature’s lifecycle and its mirroring of our lives. She is exploring our interconnectedness and creates a dialogue that is suggestive of both personal and collective memories and feelings, along with a deepening understanding of the value and health-giving properties of time spent in nature, and the potential to positively influence our present human condition. Drawing on early plant names with their multiplicity of meanings and stories they have told, her work investigates plants close ties to humans through folklores and their medicinal, visual and emotional connotations. Weaving them into new narratives intending to reveal something of the contradictions of our domestic and modern lives, along with the wider concern of the fragility of the natural world.

‘There is perhaps no symbol more enduringly vivacious, beautifully sombre, and universally beloved than the ubiquitous, sublime flower’   Nothing but Flowers  Karma 2020

Karen’s practice focuses on the handmade and material quality of making. Her work moves between abstraction and figuration, creating layered surfaces allowing for eyes to wander slowly across the work, immersing the viewer in the consolations and rich references that can be found in nature. She graduated with distinction from Gloucestershire University with a MA in Fine Art Painting in 2012 and has been selected and exhibited in The Lynn Painter Stainer Prize, Discerning Eye, the National Trust, Nature in Art Museum & Gallery and the St Barbe Museum & Art Gallery.