Bio

2006
Karensky is a name that was given to me as an endearment by my father, a master watercolor artist, the late, James Harold Miller.

I was born in Tennessee and it is still my home ...Though, my heart, mind and sometimes my body wanders around in and out of India and New York.

I come from a family of artists and craftswomen - including my sister and brother. At an early age, we were all given art materials and musical instruments along with the uncensored ability to create completely with them.
I have been an artist from birth and I look at all of life with these eyes.
My wonderful daughter, Shauna is a nurse and a painter...and I am wondering if my BEAUTIFUL grand daughter, Scarlett (6 months) will be using my paints soon!!!
Along with taking some courses with an extraordinary teacher, Paul Zeplinsky, I consider myself genetically inclined and self- taught.

I have done 'bodywork' as another profession for 20 years and studied Ayurvedic lifestyle/medicine both in Cambridge, MA and India. I consider it a privilege to work with people in this healing medium.
I have practiced meditation for many years and feel that it has been one of the main inspiratons for the objects that appear in my paintings. I mostly see them as sights in between physical and spiritual world. a link. energy of color. My main medium is watercolor with pure gold leaf - and I love sunlight - I use it for shape to paint on the paper.

I seem to sell my paintings to people that connect with them on some deep level - saying that they 'understand' the feeling or energy of them. For someone to get something
inside, an inspiration, is wonderful to hear and confirms my purpose.

In almost 35 years of work, Karensky's paintings have achieved a compelling luminosity.  Her figures and composition have become supremely still with a devotional quality that reminds one of Vermeer.  Such perfectly awake stillness unites viewer and piece in the moment of observation, and allows us to go inside her work with Karensky to the places where humanity and spirit meet.  Her use of color and light throughout the painting convey joy and peace, and inexplicably draw us again and again to the eyes and faces of her figures.  There the joy is confirmed, but the faces also tell us that the joy is not about anything in particular: it is unqualified and deeply at rest.
Karensky grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, where her spiritual life has paralleled her creative life.   - john peters

email: karen@karensky.com