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Artist Profile: Karen Steen

Karen Steen

2 W. 54th St.
Kansas City, MO 64112

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Bio:

As a child, I loved poking around tide pools. Peering down into small worlds filled with life delighted me. I searched through seashore guidebooks to identify shells, anemones, and urchins. So began my fascination with natural history and biology, subjects that inspire my art. Experimentation with materials is essential in my art practice, and through it I search for ways to portray qualities of the biological world: diversity, repetition, intricacy, rhythm, balance, interconnectedness. I began my art career as an illustrator. Many assignments were for magazine articles about health and medicine. I relish the challenge of combing the technical and conceptual skills I learned as an illustrator with the intuitive approach of a fine artist. An important phase in my artistic life was a three year period when I served as Artist-in-Residence at a hospital in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. I assisted cancer patients with visual art projects to help reduce their anxiety, pain and loneliness. I learned first hand the power of nurturing creativity. Recent solo exhibitions, Networks in Nature, showed at Cottonwood Center for the Arts in Colorado Springs and the Kansas City Artist’s Coalition. I won 1st place in the 2015 group exhibition, HEAT, at Leedy-Voulkos Art Center in Kansas City. I have done commission works for Lehigh Valley Health Network in Allentown, Pennsylvania and Kaiser Permanente’s Largo Medical Center in Upper Marlboro, Maryland. My work has been exhibited in solo and group shows In the mid-Atlantic, southern California and Kansas City regions.