Karen Cass
Oil Painting & Mixed Media
Art gives me the power to play!
My current work is evolving. Still rooted in nature and landscape, it is a continual, intuitive process of responding, playing with new compositions, color interactions, and applications. I’m experimenting with mark-making, scratching, drawing, and using unconventional tools like spatulas, rollers, textural elements, and always layering. The most exciting things happen when I allow my mind to wander and let the work take its own course. I alternate between the immediacy of collage and water-based media and the longer process of layering oils. I’m daring myself to dig deeper and allow the unexpected to happen. What matters to me is focusing on the ordinary to make it feel extraordinary.
I make mixed media collages and oil paintings inspired by nature, memory, and reflections
What’s the story behind your work?
The story behind my artwork is simply a passion for making. I am driven to create images as a response to the world around me. I am obsessed with the endless variety of colors, layers of texture, and patterns that nature provides. Tangles of roots, vegetation, rock formations, and littoral landscapes are the foundation upon which I build my stories and invite viewers into my world.
What do you hope people feel when they see it?
I hope people feel engaged and invited to travel into my work and explore. I hope to elicit a response, reflection or meditation, a familiar feeling or connection with the elements.
How does your work connect or bring people together?
I hope people feel engaged and invited to travel into my work and explore. I hope to elicit a response, reflection, or meditation; a familiar feeling; or a connection with the elements.
My work connects to community by conjuring memories or a sense of place, familiar and simple pleasures of slowing down and connecting with nature as if on a walk in the woods. I hope my work invites conversation or inspires viewers to appreciate the environment.
Who helped you along the way?
Two very important influences in my life were painting professors Kathy Soles from Emmanuel College and the late Dean Nimmer from Mass College of Art & Design. Their encouragement inspired me to pursue a career in art education and to trust/believe in myself as an artist.
How do you give back / support others?
My full-time position as Art Specialist at the Center Elementary School in Hanover is demanding and fulfilling. I teach art for Grades 2-4. It brings me joy to see students engaged in creative, hands-on learning that enhances all aspects of their academic journey. In addition to my “day job”, I have served my community for nearly 20 years as a member of the Hanover Cultural Council. This organization brings wonderful arts programs to our town and allowed me to establish the Annual Hanover Day Art Show with the essential support of The Frame Center as our host gallery for the last 10 years! This show has become a much-anticipated event every year and is a very inclusive opportunity for artists of all ability level. I am also on the faculty at the South Shore Art Center in Cohasset for the ART STARS program. Working with young people and encouraging creative collaboration is one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.
