About Karen Bowden

---

 Karen Bowden earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in Art Education at Ohio  Wesleyan University and continued with post-baccalaureate work at the  Tyler School of Art, Temple University, the University of California at  San Francisco, and Randolph-Macon Woman’s College. 

 In more than forty years as a professional artist, she has studied  with such recognized artists as Carole Barnes, Christopher Schink, Alex  Powers, Gerald Brommer, David Lussier, Don Andrews and Glen Bradshaw.  She has taught in the public schools, adult education programs and,  since becoming a resident of Lynchburg, at the Lynchburg Art Club and  the Academy Center of the Arts.

Karen is an award-winning artist whose work has appeared in shows  across the country. She continues to exhibit regionally and locally. Find her work on her Facebook page as well as in her gallery here. 

My mother was an artist and a teacher just as her mother, too, was an  artist and teacher. I continue in that tradition. I have found that  nothing is more authentic and satisfying than giving expression to what I  see by doing art and enabling others to do so as well. Just as creative  eyes seldom see the same things in the same ways, different mediums  yield a diversity of styles and possibilities for expression. So by  painting with watercolor, oil, acrylic, or in mixed media I enjoy the  freedom to explore, express, and experience an exciting variety of views  and visions.

Being an artist for me is not about living in the box of one single  signature style. It is living in the joy that comes with exploring the  range of whole, artful, diverse ways of seeing that the variety of  mediums makes possible. You have to be a little adventurous if you want  to create, and that means being willing, sometimes, to risk making a  mess! But to create, to be an artist rather than a technician, you have  to have the courage to take that chance–especially when it means getting  free of one’s own predictable, comfortable, style. Variety is the spice  of life because it is the catalyst for growth.

 Lawrence Bowden is an emeritus Professor of Religion & Culture and  the husband of Lynchburg artist, Karen Bowden. He began painting in 1997  following an academic sabbatical in which he   studied with internationally recognized Zen painter, calligrapher, and scholar Kazuaki Tanahashi.  For a decade he concentrated entirely on practicing Zen brush painting using hand ground ink on rice papers.  After retiring in 2007 he ventured into acrylics and eventually  discovered  Flashe, a vinyl water medium he now uses exclusively. 

His work has been juried into both national and regional shows including those curated by jurors such as Carter Foster of the Whitney Museum of American Art, Margot  Norton of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, and Doug  McClemont, writer for The SAATCHI Gallery & regular contributor to  ARTnews.

He opened his studio, ART daisetsu, at Riverviews Artspace in 2008.

 I have trouble thinking of myself as an “artist.” The trouble, I think, is that I don’t play in that league. I paint as a practice. I am not motivated by resume building, “Society” seeking, or finding a market for what I do. 

By “practice” I mean that I paint to see things more clearly and embrace them more accurately. As strange as it may sound, I don’t choose a subject to paint. It comes with the practice itself which says to me: there is much to be seen more accurately. And isn’t this what learning is? 

When true, learning is self-motivating, self-sustaining, and richly satisfying.

Strictly speaking, Zen is not a religion. It is a practice of mind & heart to deepen awareness the way emptiness creates the cup for your coffee. So the paintings here invite attention with the eye/the mind/the heart. They are not illustrations of some hidden meaning more profound than how your own mind/heart works on what you see. If they seem esoteric and obscure then let them be so and simply enjoy their clean forms and beauty in wonder. There’s nothing more to “get” than that.