While the museum is closed and public programs are on hold, Senior Curator Christine Brindza is catching up with some TMA collection artists to talk about their past work, current practice and works in progress. These chats are part of Cookies with a Curator – a series of conversations about art (and cookies).
Karen Kitchel’s painting Hiss, 2005, has been in TMA’s collection since 2014. Last year it was featured in the The Western Sublime: Majestic Landscapes of the American West. Christine Brindza recently talked with Karen about Petit Écolier cookies, how COVID-19 is affecting her art-making, and what it means to be a contemporary landscape artist.
About the Artist
Karen Kitchel’s environmentally resonant works embody a deep and sustained effort to transform and transcend landscape painting as it is commonly understood. Unconventional combinations of image, material, and form conspire to energize and subvert this traditional genre.
Her current series Furious Garden draws upon her own gardening practice, surviving the 2017 Thomas Fire, and contemplating issues of environmental sustainability. In the third month of self-isolation during the Covid-19 quarantine, she finds the urgency of these topics only intensifying.
Karen’s paintings have been featured in exhibitions throughout the U.S., and are in numerous private and public collections, including the permanent collections of the Denver Art Museum, the Palm Springs Art Museum, the Joslyn Art Museum, the Nicolaysen Art Museum, The Buffalo Bill Center of the West, the Tucson Museum of Art, the U.S. State Department, and many others.
Her work is represented by Robischon Gallery, Denver, CO and Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, NM and New York, NY.
Karen Kitchel lives and works in Ventura, CA.
