Karmen Line Painting

I got my start in art by way of doing graffiti with some kids from my local neighbourhood in Melbourne, Australia. I saw real artistry in graffiti and developed my sense of colour and form from those days and then moved into Fine Art painting at high school and have never looked back. In my early career I also worked as a nurse and through this work I observed some interesting characters that I was compelled to paint. I completed a series of paintings of residents of a supported accommodation house which I completed in my final year of a Bachelor of Fine Art. These paintings of special accommodation house that got national acclaim and led me to get a scholarship to study painting in New York. When I landed in New York and my world was literally blown apart as I was exposed to works of masters from Vermeer to Jackson Pollock. Ever since, I have attempted to marry the two styles of figuration and abstraction together using a bright and colourful palette. I paint intuitively using a simple idea or image as a starting point and the end result is often surprising or unexpected. The process of making marks and being present in the moment is a very mediative process with the painting quite literally painting itself. I have had over twenty years of exhibitions in Australia and internationally, with the USA being a country I have exhibited from time to time. I have studied a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne, Australia. I have been awarded a prominent Australian art scholarship that allowed me to live and study a masters of fine art at Pratt Institute in New York. I completed at PHD at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia where I explored the intersection of analogue and virtual painting media.