Barbie Painting

Original oil painting on wood. 40x40 This painting is part of my 'rubber people' series. Midge was Barbies 'best friend' growing up. Midge loves her body. She just wishes she could take off those painted on underware. She may never put her clothes back on. After peeling down the entire onion of Karen Ann Jones, what I found was ‘Karen the painter.’ The same person I was when I was 5. I never changed, I only left who I was for a while. I paint because that is who I am. Being my most authentic me is my true integrity. My goal in my work is to express my optimistic, happy, in love with life, quirky, deep, intimate and passionate perspective of life. I choose my painting by recreating a visual of the feelings I am havening at that moment. I get to spend personal time with that passionate feeling that I long to experience. This is probably why I don’t paint a painting in one day. I want to linger in that relationship. My current body of work started with my desire to paint drag queens. I am fascinated because of their extremes and the beautiful contradictions that they are. I love contradictions. I didn’t have a drag queen shoved in my closet to photograph and paint. This urgency to paint led me to Barbie’s. beautifully expressive … Lipstick and Rubber. Canvas was boring the hell out of me, so I started painting on steel. I love the raw ruggedness of steel with the buttery feel of oil paint. It was the contradiction I was looking for. I have since fallen in love with Barbie’s and steel. I love the expressiveness and versatility of both. I love bringing the soul out of a rubber doll. They all have life to me and I think the steel honors them and makes them regal. I recently started looking closer at things that we may feel shy looking at. Using lipstick and rubber feels like the ideal tool for this direction in my work. bringing Freshness and intimacy to inanimate objects.