Karen Bokert

What a privilege it is to spend one’s life in art.

My art adventure began by attending the Art Students’ League while in my teens, but it was in an art class at Wagner College where I first realized that painting would be my life’s work.  We were at the beach on a dreary, windy day, depicting some old, run down shacks.  The absorption I felt was such that time and, indeed, the world, stopped and only I, the canvas and the moment remained.

I graduated from the Universidad de las Americas in Mexico City.  My horizons broadened further while studying at the Academia in Florence, at the Sommerakademie in Salzburg with Oskar Kokoschka, and Impressionist painting with Henry Hensche in Provincetown, MA.  However, the highpoint of my student days was the two years spent in the presence of the brilliant intellectual and giant of Abstract Expressionism, Robert Motherwell, while working for my MBA at Hunter College.

In my own studio at last, I painted the glowing colors of objects bathed in natural light.  Slowly my work evolved into pure abstraction, being seduced by the freedom of expression, the journey into the unknown, the sensuous brushstrokes and the accidental discoveries characteristic of such work.

My paintings begin as doodles.  Pure, intuitive abstraction of dark and light, swirling, playful, moving and still elements with no idea of an end result.  Work more felt than understood.  These doodles, however, don’t satisfy.  I need to paint on – to add, take away, then change shapes and colors.  A dialogue begins – the painting tells me what it needs and I respond, trying to keep a balance between thought and feeling.  My art is an art of decisions, revisions, changes, additions, and subtractions – of adjustments until things feel just right to me.  The final picture is hard won.  The work can be painstaking but it is not polished.  The struggles leave behind ridges, shadows and seams of underlying layers of paint – I call the “toil tissue”.

What often emerges from the process is a hint of an image.  These seem to slip mysteriously into the work.  The paintings, once pure abstractions, now include a reference to the material world.  Images, sometimes surprising but often linked to my most profound experiences.

Having been raised in a family where international visitors were often present, I developed an interest in other cultures early on.  One of my most profound experiences has been discovering the Native American culture of the American Southwest.  The land and its people have been a recurring theme in my paintings for at least a decade.  The many varieties of Native images, when combined in ever changing ways, have become a language of beauty and spiritual meaning in my work.  My paintings are a contemporary expression of an ancient culture.

But let my paintings go beyond the meaning of messages, let them seduce your heart and eye.  At a time when our society is becoming more mechanized and impersonal, the need for, what Robert Motherwell called, felt experience, and is more important than ever.

Observing the vast varieties of cultures in the world, I became aware of the similar aspirations of all mankind, of the transience of life, its impermanence and the finality of death with its paradox of continuity.  A trip to the East was a confirming and transforming experience.  I found the “all knowing eyes” which include creation and destruction.  The journey to India resulted in my most exotic and colorful paintings, fueled by the memories of my experiences in that exquisite and unforgettable land.

In addition to painting, viewing art, teaching adults who aspire to become painters, seeing my work enter the homes of so many people, my life in art continues to be meaningful and fulfilling.  As artists, we become aware that creating is a journey without a final destination.  I await the next turn in the road.