As a printmaker my current focus is to push against the boundaries between printing and the act of drawing. Specifically how drawing materials and methods intersect with the vast system of resists, screens and hidden reversals inherent in printmaking. At this crossing point, I am able to build up layers and images that have distance from their original material and process, allowing atmosphere to take precedence and direct the visual conversation.
I find myself contemplating a sense of place more and more as the scenes pass by, day by day. Photographs of the land around me are taken regularly and quickly as I move along my travels. Some are occasional, others are daily routine. I record my shifting view and build abstracted impressions from them. Drawn line patterns, tone washes, and rows of pochoir printed dots – forming photographic imagery, are laid in tusche, watercolor and colored pastel creating emotive landscapes that play with visual perception, place, time, and fictitious vantages.
Karen Gallagher Iverson is a San Francisco Bay Area printmaker exploring innovative conventions within the fields of traditional printmaking and drawing. Her work focuses on uniquely expressing the light and silhouettes of the Northern California landscape. She has exhibited in numerous galleries and museums including the Turner Print Museum, Crocker Art Museum, New Museum Los Gatos and the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art.
Gallagher Iverson’s work can most recently be seen in the vol7:4 issue of Catamaran Literary Reader and vol 30/31 of the Mid America Print Council Journal. Karen was awarded a Kala Art Institute Artist Parent Award where she maintains an artist residency. Her work is in the collections of the Bancroft Library, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Nevada Museum of Art as well as other private and public collections.
Karen is currently the President of the California Society of Printmakers and an elected member of the Los Angeles Printmaking Society, the Boston Printmakers and Mid America Print Council. She brings to her current roles decades of experience as a fine art installer, gallery preparator, studio manager and project assistant for prominent artists and galleries in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Lithography, Screen print, Pochoir, Monoprint, Monotype, DryPoint, Frottage, Photo Polymenr Intaglio, Relief, Linocut, Woodcut.