ARTIST STATEMENT
Based on a full life of aspirations, experiences and recollections, I paint what I feel about what I see. I use oils and cold wax medium to create abstract paintings that reflect both my understanding and experience of living in both the US and abroad. My process is like a superhighway with ideas flowing all the time until an exit says “get off”. This germination of ideas is ongoing and in constant transition as my knowledge and understanding of my reality evolves with exposure. For me, nothing is off limits; what I see is my truth. Painting is the most challenging thing I have ever done and it is, as well, the most peaceful.
Now, I am alternately fascinated, inspired, challenged by what I have experienced in this truly cultural mosaic that is the Southwest. Trained early as a sociologist, my reactions to life in the desert, Southwest history and geography as well as many sociocultural concerns, flow into my work.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Kari Bell is a contemporary abstract painter, working and drawing inspiration from personal experience, the natural landscape and rich history of New Mexico. Utilizing oils or oils and cold wax, Kari creates space for spontaneous happenings within the paint itself; the waxy surface can be scratched, gouged, patterned, pressed and stained layer after layer. This invites the viewer to take a deeper look. Her work interprets historical and geographical displacement, climate change and lived experience through the bold pairing of color, light, texture and form.
Much of Kari’s earlier aesthetic experiences were spent abroad in Spain and France. There Kari immersed herself in the expanse of European and Latin American arts and culture and assembled a mental portfolio, filing away vivid imagery, documenting experience and preserving memory while slowly integrating her own unique painterly framework and artist identity. She traveled and consumed arts, culture and music freely during a time when gendered sociocultural norms dictated that women take a more passive role. Further challenging a patriarchal legacy in academia, Kari served as a university educator and department chair of Modern Language Studies for more than three decades. In higher education, Kari sparked creative and academic dialogues to take shape in the classroom laboratory. In higher education, Kari sparked creative and academic dialogues to take shape in the classroom laboratory. These dialogues now enjoy a second life as Kari pours her rich lived experiences into vibrant contemporary compositions.
Now in a new chapter, the act of painting takes on a transformative and sometimes subversive role. Kari’s abstracted works speaks to rejecting limiting societal and academic structures and instead unlocks creative possibility, unpredictability in material and new modes of learning as-artist. For Kari, pushing boundaries encourages innovation, imagination and a deeper level of creative inquiry.
Kari is co-founder of the newly organized Taos Abstract Artist Collective and co-curator of the TAAC exhibitions held in October 2022, April 2023 and October 2023 and. As well, she is the founder of Cerulean, a caucus/salon based in the greater Albuquerque, NM area.
© Kari Bell