Contemporary California Impressionist Painter Karen Tarlton paints oil paintings with a unique sense of color, texture, and light. She now resides in San Diego, California, after living all over the US as an Air Force spouse of 27 years. She graduated from UC Davis and furthered her studies at the Corcoran School of Fine Art in DC and workshops nationwide.

For the first 10 years of her journey as an artist, she mainly painted plein air in many beautiful parks and cities across the United States. As of 2002, she has been a daily painter, creating a new painting almost every day. With loose strokes and bold use of color, she brings a unique perspective to the contemporary art world. She creates lively, engaging, colorful art, and her work is widely collected worldwide from her popular Etsy shop of 13 years: karensfineart.net

Inspired by her travels, she paints all genres. Her paintings of landscapes, cityscapes and boat-filled harbors become illuminated by majestic, textured light. She is well known for her paintings of colorful angels and children in motion in her unique style, using a palette knife to build energetic layers of color. She works both in the plein air and from life in the studio, but she also paints from memory and on commission, using photos to create larger paintings. Influenced by all the master Impressionists, painting with a unique sense of color, texture and light.

“The palette knife, allows me to stay loose, merging colors and sculpting wet paint, alla prima, into a dynamic final product. My paintings take on a multi-dimensional form and are easily recognized for using heavy textures and bold colors to emphasize nature’s spontaneity and beauty in a modern, abstract way.”

Karen’s work can be found on Instagram @karentarlton and at https://www.etsy.com/shop/karensfineart.