Karen Goetzinger is a visual artist who through the use of mixed media such as acrylic, ink, graphite and oil pastel, expressively marks the imprint of time and place on individual memory. There is a fierceness about her brushwork— an agitation and determination. Each large scale painting is intentionally without figurative elements allowing each viewer to become the human element, in solitary interaction with the abstract landscape and their own narratives. 
 
She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Fashion Design with an emphasis in Fine Arts from Mount Mary University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her work is exhibited by public and commercial galleries throughout North America, in cities such as Toronto, New York, Milwaukee, and Grand Rapids. It has also been shown in exhibition spaces in China and Australia. It hangs internationally in both private and corporate collections.

Recent recognition for her work includes a 2019-20 ARTicipate Endowment Fund grant and exhibition award at the Shenkman Arts Centre LaLande + Doyle Exhibition Space in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Her work has been funded by both the Ontario Arts Council and Canada Council for the Arts.

Karen has taught by invitation in Australia and New Zealand. She was appointed to the Ottawa 2017 Arts, Culture, and Heritage Investment Program Steering Committee and was unanimously elected to the Arts Network Ottawa Board of Directors, serving two consecutive three year terms.

 

Through my gestural paintings I aim to capture those overlooked modest moments of beauty, revealed unexpectedly perhaps in the imperfect and the fleeting, but that nevertheless illuminate our humanity and our longing to connect with each other. I record the feeling and emotion of that moment of discovering beauty in the inconsequential.   

Words rarely come easily for me, one thought splits into another and then another. Each blank canvas allows me to expressively explore the vocabulary of colour and marks as a way to record, without literal references, the thoughts, impressions, and memories of a singular day or place in time. I begin with spontaneous layers of mixed media such as graphite, acrylic, or ink, but after those first few freeing marks that break the surface of the canvas and give direction to the painting, each stroke and line is thought through and intentional. 

The abstract imagery allows viewers to interact and connect with each piece in solitary exploration of the surface. It gives them the opportunity to shift their thoughts from the daily barrage of negativity, discontent, and rage now so common in our lives, to appreciating the beauty in each day waiting to be discovered. And even perhaps to finding value and contentment in what may at first seem inconsequential but is in fact essential to the human experience.