Karen Baker CPS PSA – Artist and Pastel Painting Instructor

A pastel and acrylic artist and instructor, Karen Baker paints what most inspires her -  nature and its ever-changing landscape in all seasons. Favorite rural New England subjects include open meadows, hillsides, mountain views and old farm buildings.

Her low-country series depicts the remote land masses of the Everglades and Florida sugar cane fields, as well as the waterways and marshlands of the South. Her most recent series, created exclusively for White Creek Images, features still life "portraits" of fruit and vegetables. She is also well known for her colorful floral paintings, particularly the poppy series which features fields of flowers and more detailed, close-up studies.

Karen's paintings are highly textural and expressive of a personal dialogue with nature. They are interwoven with natural light and subtle emotion.  She paints with vivid colors, a crisp edge, and a variety of values as she aims to capture the changing qualities of light. Karen is very skilled at using a variety of colors not only to create great depth in the picture plane but to render form. Her paintings are recognizable by their dramatic skies and full-palette hues.

All of her artwork is rendered entirely in soft pastel which she likes for its direct application, portability, tactile quality, luminosity, color variations, and calligraphy of line. She works both in the studio and outdoors, creating finished pieces from sketches, photo references, and, more importantly, her imagination, which she believes produces paintings expressive of an "inner landscape." Among other things, her favorite light of day is late afternoon when the sun is at a low angle, yielding long shadows and warm colors.

Besides painting, Karen enjoys teaching people about their innate creativity and how to draw and paint with pastels.  She is founder and director of the Vermont School for Art & Creativity which offers workshops in July and August in southern Vemont.  In addition, she teaches landscape painting workshops at the Fletcher Farm School for the Arts and Crafts in Ludlow, Vt., and at the River Gallery School, Brattleboro, Vt.  She also provides pastel painting lessons throughout the Tampa Bay area in Florida to include Dunedin, Clearwater, St Petersburg, and Safety Harbor.

Baker is a Signature Member of both the Pastel Society of America and the Connecticut Pastel Society.  Likewise she is also an artist member of the Southwest Florida Pastel Society, the Pastel Society of Tampa Bay, the Vermont Pastel Society, and The Exhibiting Society of Artists, Clearwater, Florida.  She has studied with the late Master Pastellist Wolf Kahn, Herman Margulies, and PSA signature members Christina DeBarry, Elizabeth Apgar Smith, Stanley Maltzman, and Albert Handell. Karen's paintings have won her awards in regional and national exhibits and are sought after by collectors around the country and abroad.

Karen is available for commissioned work.  Her original artwork is on view at Gallery at the VAULT, Springfield and in Vermont at Young & Constantin Gallery, Wilmington.  In Delaware she is represented by You’ve Been Framed Fine Art & Craft Gallery; in Massachusetts by AZ Fine Arts, Wellesley Hills; and in Florida by Dunedin Fine Art Center, Dunedin, where she is also on the faculty.  Her fruit and vegetable series prints are published by White Creek Images, Cambridge, New York.  

Lessons available at: Clearwater Painting Lessons, St. Petersburg Painting Lessons, and Dunedin Painting Lessons.

For more information, call Karen Baker at 727-366-6477 or email her at karen@kbakerstudios.com