Karen Baldner ~ Bloomington, IN

Karen Baldner ~ Bloomington, IN
The inspiration to my work is the seeming paradox of opposites. I am interested in dichotomies of all sorts as they live side by side with each other in my own life, in that of others, and in the grander history of human kind: brutality and grace, coarseness and dignity, the beautiful and the grotesque. In my work each new piece is a kind of alchemic act towards living with this paradox. Personal trauma serves as the narrative backdrop to my work. Hence my various bodies of work are accompanied by a certain emotional evolution from pain to anger to pleasure and humor, to an interest in the human drama outside my personal realm. I like to see my work as a process of incompatibles not necessarily its resolution.

 This ongoing body of drawings explores the space between absence and presence as an experience of potential and suspense. They record in a stream-of-consciousness vocabulary the experience of elusive yet powerful memory presences that embed themselves into the fabric of life. The handmade paper with its fluid formations is to lend an organic surface on which the image has room to shift.  Images emerge from a combination of ink pen or charcoal line drawings, ink washes and photo copy transfers that can flow spontaneously and synchronous with the experience.  
Handmade paper sheets are made from abaca/flax with embedded horse hair, mixed media drawings, ranging in size from 8" x 11" to 15" x 20"