Karen Blanchet has been busy, making the best possible use of her time. The ebullient Legal artist has found the discipline to dedicate a few hours every day in her studio space diligently working on her art.
This practice has paid off not just in expanding her creative output and her sense of satisfaction. It has also been met with a fantastic opportunity for maximum exposure.
For the final St. Albert ArtWalk of the summer season, she will be seen in two locations at the same time: Profiles for the Guilded show and The Bookstore on Perron for Big and Small, her joint effort with Carol Brown.
“I haven’t found the cloning machine yet,” she laughed. “I’m absolutely delighted. The shows look really good.”
It’s good that she still has a sense of humour. Others might buckle under the stress of two concurrent openings and a carefully kept painting schedule.
“I do guard — with severity — my painting time which is a minimum of 15 hours a week so I do have that morning three-hour stint that I put to good use,” she explained about her work ethic. “I definitely would love to have more!”
With lots of experience under her belt already, she’s still considered an emerging artist. Working so much has given her a sense of youthful energy that she wants to parlay into even greater success in the future with some kind of partnership for gallery representation to help get her name out even more or even a patron.
In the meantime, what you’ll find on display are her most recent works and they are also some of her largest, all on the same theme of the many faces of Eve.
“I’m exploring roles of women and the mystery of life. It’s a very personal exploration. I had started the series before I actually became serious about painting. I was experimenting. I was taking a personal development program that challenged me to do seven paintings in seven weeks no smaller than 30” by 40” (76 centimetres by 101 cm) and I was going, ‘Oh my God!’ I actually finished them in six weeks so it showed me what I could do full-time painting. I was just so delighted with the knowledge and power.”
She’s the ‘big’ part while Brown takes the ‘small’ side with her little landscapes. She’s a silent fixture on the local visual arts scene, occasionally popping up with a new style or focus.
“I always do something different,” she explained, admitting that she doesn’t have a shtick that she sticks to time after time. “Everybody recognizes [my work]. Lately I’ve been doing a lot of landscapes.”
It’s a stroke of luck to be able to check out what these two have been up to all in one place.
