Karen Marie Stets
Karen Marie Stets
Karen Marie Stets

To paint is to embark on an adventure like a leap into the bare plain in moments of self-forgetfulness. Aesthetics is governed by this intention. This in itself is the most important thing.

It is the stroke of becoming that is the attraction of painting. When curiosity and joy go hand in hand, a new dimension of meaning emerges.

It may therefore be most obvious to call the -ism I am concerned with, psychic formalism, as forms and structure are lived out on the canvas in a chain of absence and presence arising from the mind released in small breakthrough experiences.

What follows is work with the resulting structure for a harmonious coexistence. The color attitude is strong and fundamental to the subject’s life. Often there is the element of children, fauna and flora. Acrylic, gouache and ink on canvas and paper

Exhibitions

  • 1996 2 x SE Glas Søborg
  • 1997 Klaverfabrikken, Hillerød
  • 1997 Gammelholms Farvehandel, København
  • 1997-2000 Art and Frame, Frederiksberg
  • 1998 Klaverfabrikken, Hillerød
  • 1998 Det lille Galleri, Rudkøbing
  • 1999 Sundby Bibliotek, København
  • 1999 Støberihallen, Hillerød, kollektiv
  • 2000 Christianshavns Beboerhus, København
  • 2001 Tandlægeklinikken, Hans Knudsens Plads, København
  • 2004 Holstebro Kunstmuseum / Odin Teatrets 40 års jubilæum, kollektiv
  • 2005 Soldenfeldts Stiftelse, København, kollektiv
  • 2006 Ny Akropolis, København
  • 2007 Ny Akropolis, København
  • 2008 Sankt Lukas Hospice, København
  • 2009 Prema Sai, Athène, Grækenland, kollektiv
  • 2014 Soldenfeldts Stiftelse, København, kollektiv
  • 2014 Forsyningen, Frederiksberg, København
  • 2016 Soldenfeldts Stiftelse, kollektiv
  • 2017 Docken, Nordhavn, kollektiv
  • 2017 Ritzaus Bureau, København
  • 2017 Nærum Bibliotek
  • 2018 Den Norske Sømandskirke, kollektiv
  • 2018 Docken, Nordhavn, kollektiv
  • 2019 Jagtvejens Bibliotek: Krig, kollektiv
  • 2020 Vibenshave, Nyborgade 11, København
  • 2021 Soldenfeldts Stiftelse 
  • 2021 Docken, Nordhavn, kollektiv
  • 2021 – 2022 Hygge, Avignon, Place des Carmes, Frankrig

THE COLOR PATH OF KAREN MARIE STETS

For the passerby who discovers the paintings of KAREN-MARIE STETS, and suddenly stops his nonchalant gaze under the sudden surge of proliferating strong and beautiful colors, no room for doubt: he is evolving now and for the time being, in a mysterious and beautiful country, where some unexpected confrontation plays out in the colored shadows of a light thus constantly reinvented.

Uncertain and strange silhouettes emerge sometimes here and there in the maze of an intensely colored light which traverses the plans of the artist’s acrylics and gouaches. However, even though her dreamlike titles, the artist never identifies her works with any narrative. Because a story, a narrative, requiring a beginning and an end, belongs to a finitude that this painter, alive with lightning impulses, will never recognize for her own. 

Karen Marie Stets carries her works which springs from the depths of her being, to the highest of her ethereal forms, towards the light, to the highest of her art.

Found in this born colorist, a course of colors that the gaze follows, bouncing from tasks in shapes, swirls in splashes, inscriptions in spurts, which in all respects obeys the teachings of the greatest: constructions by colored surfaces, constant research of color intensity. The light is never explicit and shown there, but always expressed and supported by an array of colored surfaces in an intense progression.

The coherent and powerful journey of this painter, all at once joyful and mystical, reminds us the immortal poem of Antonio Machado:

« Caminante, no hay camino / sino estelas sobre la mar ». (Traveller, there is no path, only a trail over the sea.)

On the never-ending ocean of life, the luminous wake of colors of the painter Karen-Marie Stets will remain   powerfully inscribed.