Karen Hansen

With a life-long passion for art, Karen Hansen has been painting full time since 2001. Prior to that, she spent 22 years in the field of animation. The filmmaking took her to studios all over the world in a fascinating and challenging industry but painting full time was always her dream. Now she?s living her dream.Hansen’s paintings have been exhibited widely in both group and solo shows. Her work can be found in collections across the United States as well as Europe. She has received numerous awards and commissions.In a Minneapolis Art for Architecture? competition she submitted a drawing for a manhole cover design reflecting life in the city. Her award winning image was cast in brass and is installed in the sidewalk outside the Minneapolis City Center. In 2006 she was published in the book, Best of California Artists and Artisans and was awarded second place in the Acrylic Painting category. In the American Art Awards International Competitions for 2011, 2012 and 2013 each of her entries was awarded, the latest entries placing first, third and fourth in the Minimalism category. In 2012 she was invited to be included in the book, Best Of Presents America Acrylic Artists Volume I, as well as Sue St. John?s ebook, “A Walk Into Abstracts…How Did They Do That?” In the fall of 2013 she spent three weeks as an Artist in Residence at the Mark Rothko Centre in Daugavpils, Latvia (Rothko?s birthplace). Her work is now in the museum?s permanent collection. Her latest paintings, the Etherea Series, are lyrical, atmospheric abstractions of meditation and memory; they are meant as resting places, serene escapes from our hectic, complex world, glimpses of the rhythms and the quiet mysteries of our fractured lives and entry points to peace and our search for deeper connection. These understated paintings with their subtle complexity, are layered translucently in search of radiance, nuance and depth. They evolve through a process of improvisation, experimentation, revision and intuition. Hansen is a native of Chicago. In 1985, after many brutal winters in the Midwest, she came to the Los Angeles area and fell in love with sun-drenched Southern California. She now lives in Burbank with her husband and her cat.