Karen Baker CPS PSA
A pastel artist and teacher, Karen Baker paints what she is most inspired by—the world of nature and its ever-changing landscape in all seasons. Favorite rural New England subjects include old farm buildings, hillsides, open meadows, and mountain vistas. Her low-country series depicts the waterways and marshlands of the South, as well as the remote land masses of the Everglades and Florida sugar cane fields. She is also well known for her colorful floral paintings, particularly the poppy series which features fields of flowers and more detailed, close-up studies. A recent series, created exclusively for White Creek Images, features still life "portraits" of fruit and vegetables.

Baker's paintings are interwoven with natural light and subtle emotion. They are highly textural and expressive of a personal dialogue with nature. She paints with vivid colors, variety of values, and crisp edges as she aims to capture the changing qualities of light. Baker is skilled at using color not only to render form but to create great depth in the picture plane. Her paintings are clearly recognizable by their dramatic skies and full-palette hues.

All of her artwork is rendered entirely in soft pastel which she likes for its direct application, tactile quality, portability, color variations, luminosity, and calligraphy of line. Her paintings are composites of many visual resources. She works both in the studio and outdoors, creating finished pieces from plein air color studies, sketches, photo references, and, more importantly, her imagination, which she believes produces paintings most expressive of an "inner landscape." Her favorite light of day to capture in a landscape painting is late afternoon when the sun is at a low angle, yielding long shadows and warm colors.

Baker is a Signature Member of both the Connecticut Pastel Society and the Pastel Society of America.  She is also an artist member of Vermont Pastel Society, Southwest Florida Pastel Society, Pastel Society of Tampa Bay, and The Exhibiting Society of Artists, Clearwater, Florida.  She has studied with the late Master Pastellist Herman Margulies, Wolf Kahn, and PSA signature members Stanley Maltzman, Elizabeth Apgar Smith, Christina DeBarry, and Albert Handell. Baker's paintings have won her awards in regional and national exhibits and are sought after by collectors around the country and abroad.

Besides painting, Baker enjoys teaching people about their innate creativity and how to draw and paint with pastels.  She is founder and director of the Vermont School for Art & Creativity which offers workshops in July and August in southern Vemont.  In addition, she teaches landscape painting workshops at the Fletcher Farm School for the Arts and Crafts in Ludlow, Vt., and at the River Gallery School, Brattleboro, Vt.   Workshop schedule 2010. 

Baker is available for commissioned work.  Her original artwork is on view in Vermont at Young & Constantin Gallery, Wilmington, and at Gallery at the VAULT, Springfield.  In Massachusetts she is represented by AZ Fine Arts, Wellesley Hills; in Delaware by You’ve Been Framed Fine Art & Craft Gallery; and in Florida by Dunedin Fine Art Center, Dunedin, where she is also on the faculty.  Her fruit and vegetable series prints are published by White Creek Images, Cambridge, New York.  For more information, call Karen Baker at 727-366-6477 or email her at karen@kbakerstudios.com