Good Bye Norma Jean Painting

Statement: Karen Rosenfarb is a self taught visual contemporary artist whose passion for art was influenced by her life experiences. Art has always been her secret passion, her dream and an integral part of her life. For Karen, painting has been a sacred and passionate journey, a tool for self-expression and a way to capture the beauty of color and texture, and an outlet for her inner soul. It was the key that unlocked her spirit and is a realism of a lifelong passion. Her thoughts of being a visual artist was inspired by the beauty that surrounds us daily including her fascination for the Blue Ridge mountains and the ever changing colorful murals of endless skies and grandiose views to her travels to places where she was fascinated by the intricate details of ancient architecture and magnificent landscapes - to living in South Florida with it's picturesque blue ocean - all become the key inspiration to the awaking of her artful soul. It is these images that guide her when she creates her colorful works. A closer view of the collages in her paintings reveals the images of landscapes, trees, oceans, buildings, and people from around the world. Most of her pop-art style paintings are portraits that are a kaleidoscope of exuberant and explosive colors with the goal of dazzling the viewer. The multi-panel paintings are painted on four gallery wrapped canvases. She paints with acrylics using brush and pallet knife and mixed media collage. This combined method of painting and collage allows for the application of color into a painting that is unrelated to the actual subject, but becomes the sum of all its parts. It also takes a simple subject and allows for an energetic interpretation that goes far beyond the actual subject. The bold colors tell the story and the effects of using a pallet knife and collage adds the dramatic texture, dimension and layers. It is the use of contrasting and unusual mixture of colors and layers that best define and characterize her paintings. She embraces the details of the master painters as well as the contemporary paintings of Picasso, Lichtenstein, Warhol, Miro, and Matisse to name a few. Bio: Karen Rosenfarb is a self taught visual contemporary artist whose passion for art was influenced by her life experiences. She is an imaginative painter who is driven by an incredible passion for self-expression through art.