I will be showing new work at the Art Access Gallery – 540 S Drexel Ave, Columbus, OH – on May 17th, 2024.
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Art Access Show
Bexley, Ohio
“Materials Matter”
New Works through September 10, 2022
This was a group show that I participated in at the Art Access Gallery in Bexley, Ohio.
A shout-out to Ann, Judy, Paula and Ricki ~ I was honored to hang on the same walls!
http://www.artaccessgallery.com/
Gallery Hours Wednesday – Saturday
September 5, 2022
“To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.”
~ Mary Oliver
My paintings showing in “Materials Matter” are new encaustic paintings utilizing collage and burnt surfaces as details throughout.
The process of melting the encaustic surface typically involves torching the surface in a controlled manner to create and image that moves gently and untamed. But I wanted to drive the energy of the torch into something more committed, so I reversed the additive process and literally burned the surface. These shapes are dark, reductive masses that possess strong, solemn moments.
The silent and singular shapes are the focal points of these pieces – a suggestion of the memories of those separated and left standing alone after natural disasters, war, grief and disease.
Using old phone books and maps, I assembled patterns and messages within the paintings. The white pages provided a lineal pattern of the surname “Wood” to build the textures of a forest, messages of real estate properties for sale create a horizon line of a scorned landscape, and torn maps and homemade papers suggest land masses and broken communities that have been overcome by divisiveness and natures furies.
From destruction emerged something new.
A big “thank you” to all those who attended the show!
Art Access Gallery
Art Access Gallery
Art Access Gallery
Art Access Gallery
Art Access Gallery
“Passage Between Cliffs” – Process Photo
“Passage Between Cliffs”
36″ x 48″
Encaustic
“Last Standing-Silvanus Saved the Woods”
48″ x 60″
Encaustic
“Remembering”
36″ x 48″
Encaustic
“Remembering” – Detail
“Red Phone Book Woods”
24″ x 24″
Encaustic
Manifest Gallery
Cincinnati, Ohio
“Adrift”, encaustic, homemade papers, maps, 53” x 53″
Artist: Karen Rumora
January 23, 2022
My work was selected to show in the Wilderness exhibit of the Five Themes Project at the Manifest Gallery in Cincinnati. The space was filled with magical work created by so many fascinating people from all over the country and I was incredibly honored to be amongst those selected.
“Adrift” was motivated by my observations on Google Earth of the movement of the polar ice cap and the widening of the Northwest Passages. Now and again my curiosity led me to “check in” and since 2014 I noticed significant changes in the landscape. This moved me to produce my piece.
I begin my process by creating textured paper from recycled material and maps. I drop wet pulp into organic shapes and allow them to dry. Against wooden panels, I arrange the paper to emulate masses of land and sea. I “cook” an encaustic medium from beeswax, damar varnish and pigment, then fuse it between the paper and panels with a torch.
I used repurposed paper maps to suggest a shift in the crosshairs of human existence – in which we are all pulled off course. I reclaim, tear, melt, and fuse materials to evoke a sense of motion and discord. My use of encaustic medium is fluid and impermanent; heat moves the pigment and shifts the paper. The process reflects nature in that it is raw, fluid and unpredictable. It mimics the fragility of the earth in a changing climate.
Are we creating our own wilderness – is nature pushing back?
Art for Life 2021
Columbus Museum of Art
“Summer Storm”, 24′ x 24″, encaustic
Artist: Karen Rumora
October 23, 2021
Thank you and congratulations to the individuals who bid and won my painting “Summer Storm” at the Columbus Museum of Art!
Art for Life is a biennial art auction, started in 1989, that has helped raise awareness and approximately $6 million in funding for HIV/AIDS medical care, prevention, education, testing and advocacy services. The event is not only a celebration of the arts community and Equitas Health’s life-saving work, but also a celebration of life and the artists who enrich it. The 2018 Art for Life raised over one million dollars and more than 1,000 attendees, continuing its legacy as the most successful charity art auction fundraiser in Ohio.
Ohio Art League’s Fall Exhibition 2021
Every day I see or hear something that more or less
kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle
in the haystack of light. It was what I was born for – to look, to listen,
to lose myself inside this soft world – to instruct myself over and over
in joy, and acclamation. Nor am I talking about the exceptional,
the fearful, the dreadful, the very extravagant – but of the ordinary, the common, the very drab,
the daily presentations. Oh, good scholar, I say to myself, how can you help
but grow wise with such teachings as these – the untrimmable light
of the world, the ocean’s shine, the prayers that are made out of grass?
– Mary Oliver, poet
“Biophilia”, 36″ x 36″, Oil on Canvas
Artist: Karen Rumora
September, 2021
What an honor to have been selected to be part of the Ohio Art League’s Fall Exhibition. Because we were still in the throws of COVID, the exhibition was online. I love rich, saturated color, and the meditative quality of the organic forms. I felt a sense of safety in my studio making these marks.
Ed Dixon was the juror. Ed is a native of Dayton, and a longtime art enthusiast. He opened the Edward A. Dixon Gallery in the Fall of 2017 in Downtown Dayton, Ohio. After years of involvement in the music, film and fashion industry, Ed decided to turn his attention to his passion for visual art and began the curation of artwork from artists on a world-wide scale. He has curated and hosted multiple shows at the gallery that have included artists such as Sabrina Terence, Ronnie Williams, Marilynn Page, Erica Arndts and the late, legendary Beatles animator Ron Campbell.
In Ed’s words; “The Fall season was another influence with not just its color and tone, but also for its reminder of constant change and a coming renewal.”