Lighthouse Waves is an acrylic painting by artist Karen Phillips Curran

community integration

I moved to Bear River Nova Scotia almost two years now. Covid has greatly restricted my integration but nonetheless, I’ve made inroads into the community. I have painted and exhibited one show now in Bear River, am in two of the three galleries in the village and have had an exhibit in Annapolis Royal, a town not far from here. It is famous for its history and artistic verve. Lots of amazing artists live and work there.
My show in Bear River, called “H2Ohhhhh”, is a series of artworks related to water…mostly acrylic paintings and a couple of watercolours. I came up with most of the pieces while in residence at Bareneed Studio in Newfoundland last October. I hand-built most of the frames and used my faux painting skills to create the finishing touches on those frames.
No one in the arts gets paid by the hour, that luxury is reserved for lawyers and high earners. Even still, I am happy to spend a lifetime creating art for folks to enjoy, to connect with, and keep as their own.
Sometimes it is about the connection to something.
Other times it’s colour or a feeling they get.
minimal waves watercolour
Once in a while it is a deep sense of the work that defies anything I meant, and is owned completely by the person who acquires the work…those are the most exciting to me! They offer me a new perspective of the work I was unaware of. It’s like lecturing on geography and it gets understood as astrophysics…connected but … a different viewpoint.

My growth as an artist is an ongoing process and like us all, I live and learn. As we slide into the winter months Im excited to be spending hours in my studio in creative mode, searching and learning and teaching myself about life and love and nature and people.
I have a few projects (well few is a misnomer I have many projects) to discover reveal and unravel this winter and I hope you will join m,e on that journey in some small way.
keep warm and safe

Red and White Lighthouse is shown here in a painting looking up against a sky with clouds
Red and White Lighthouse
karen while thinking
one of those kinds of moments

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