Karen Breunig: Woman in the Water
October 17 – January 15, 2023
@ Frasier
Body becomes element.
Water is a constant theme in Karen Breunig’s vibrant, textural, and emotive works. She often paints herself as a woman in the water and incorporates recurring depictions of buckets, fountains, and pools. She combines these elements with celestial bodies and other human figures to explore the blurred boundary between memory and imagination, the fluidity of emotion, and the fleeting nature of human interaction.
Woman in the Water presented works by Breunig in a variety of mediums and sizes and highlights several continuing styles and distinct shifts over the course of her career. Collectively, the works manifested stories of love, loss, and shadowed pasts. Through these narratives, Breunig invited us to consider dichotomies of the human spirit as relatable experiences shaped by uncontrollable environmental forces.
About the Artist
Karen Breunig is a Colorado-based artist who has been painting since the age of 13. Her work explores the fragmentary and fleeting nature of memory; the ephemeral quality of reality; and memory and perception, particularly as they relate to storytelling. Breunig studied painting as an undergraduate student at the University of Colorado Boulder and the Kansas City Art Institute. She received her MFA in painting from Parsons School of Design in New York City. She has been represented by galleries in Santa Fe, New York, and Denver. Her work is included in numerous public and private collections, such as the Palmer Museum of Art in Pennsylvania and Skidmore College in Massachusetts. Breunig has participated in solo and group exhibitions all over the country, most recently in the 2021 group exhibition Viral Influence: Art in the Time of Coronavirus at the Arvada Center.
BMoCA at Frasier is a collaboration between Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art and Frasier Retirement Community. Curated by BMoCA, this series of exhibitions in The Canyons Gallery is an extension of the museum’s exhibition schedule. Each exhibition is complemented by a series of education programs.