Karen Moran Kopf

Artist Statement

Mystical Landscapes and Seascapes
I have been enthusiastically experimenting with textures and gold, silver and copper leaf and acrylics for the mystical landscape series. I take what I see in nature and mold it by, creating simpler forms, spatial relationships, bold colors, and varied and deep textures. I would like the visual story I am telling in my mystical landscapes and seascapes to invite the viewer into the painting and to allow the viewer to create his/her own narrative.

Series “Within”
A special friend of mine decided to retire after many years of helping people using Reiki, accupressure, massage, and her overall caring nature. She would never call herself a “healer”, but rather a guide to help the body use its own energy to heal. She helped me more than one time and became very important in my life. I felt the need to thank her with a painting. One night I dreamed the painting I would paint for her. The entire painting was visualized and fully executed in my dream. I followed my dream and depicted this beautiful person.

An outline of a woman shows an ocean vista with sky, silver leaf water, distant rocky shores, and nearer copper leaf grasses and textured fleshy sand. She stands in front of a symbolic supportive wall of large blocks of gold leaf.

The woman’s essence is beautiful and natural, as the ocean view becomes her portrait. In my dream she had no outline of hair. I realized as I sketched the painting that this was related to the fact that my friend had worked with cancer survivors such as myself, some of whom had lost their hair. I also realized that this painting
would be the first in a series of portraits of women and men who have battled the beasts of illness – particularly, but not limited to, cancer. It was fitting that the first painting should be inspired by someone who has worked with those who were ill and helped each of them release her/his body’s energy to heal itself.

The gold leaf blocks around the figure highlight the spiritual nature of the woman, much in the way the gold leaf background worked in icons of the early centuries. They are shown to be a supportive structure for the essence of the woman, and in subsequent paintings of this series are symbolically inclusive of the family, friends, doctors, nurses, medical personnel, and all the many people and even animal companions who have positively touched her/his life during the struggle.

After the painting I titled “Within I,” was completed and dedicated to Brenda, I continued this series, dedicating it too those who have battled cancer and other “beasts of illness” with medical means, spiritual means and the beauty and energy of the essence within themselves.

Series – “The Earth Has a Memory” (TEHAM)
This series was inspired by a trip I took to the Tucson, Arizona area. As I was viewing the petroglyphs of the Hohokama Indians on a rock outcropping in the Arizona Desert Museum, I could see these people with my mind’s eye as they worked there hundreds of years ago. It occurred to me that the earth has a memory of the people who have been here over the centuries. It is an honor and an interesting challenge for me to convey this idea in symbolic paintings.

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Artist Bio

After graduating from Wagner College, NYC with a BA in Fine Art, I spent most of the seventies living and painting in Europe. I had studied painting in Austria and then had lived in Antwerp, Belgium.  

Eventually I established a studio in Marbella, Spain on the Costa del Sol, about an hour away from the birthplace of Picasso.

Five years under the bright Spanish sun added an intensity to the colors of my palette and a wide range of experience to my career as a professional artist. I exhibited in Antwerp, Belgium; Pepe Moreno in Marbella, Spain; Heller Gallery in Madrid, Spain; Gallery Nini in Oslo, Norway; Las Girasoles, Almunecar, Spain; and Galleria Philippe Maeck, Marbella, Spain.

My works from this period are in the collections of Baroness Terri von Panz, New York; Zelva Fisher-Pierce, Switzerland; John Havlicek, Boston; Said Jamai, Australia; Warren Gold, London;

Ann Maytag of New York and New Mexico; Don Ramon Sorella de Namur, Spain;  Yvan Van Outrive of Bangkok, Thailand; Duquesa de Almenara, Madrid, Spain; Mr. anad Mrs. Albert Rickmans, Netherlands; John Burgos, Mexico City; Harold Robbins, California, and others.

After I returned to the U.S., I exhibited in Rhoda Sande Gallery in midtown Manhattan and established a studio in Upstate New York, where I was resident director of Guy Park State Historic Site.

Eventually I moved to Winston-Salem with my husband Jeff. Here we raised two sons. I earned a Masters degree from Salem College and worked for twenty years as a teacher. Although I continued to paint, I was limited in time until I retired from teaching and began my current work.

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