As a child I used to draw a lot, spending most of my time on horses and other animals. As I got older, art fell by the wayside because of work and then raising a family.

I didn’t get back to art and painting until about 5 years ago. I actually didn’t think that I could draw or paint anymore since it had been so long since I had last picked up a pencil or brush!

But in 2018, my friend Cindy asked me to take a watercolor class and it all came back to me.

As I learned, I discovered that the traditional watercolor style painting is not really my cup of tea, so I started to explore different ways to paint with watercolors.

I found an online class that taught how to paint realistically with watercolor, so I completed several of the tutorials and haven’t looked back since.

I usually paint on 140# Arches hot pressed paper which is not very forgiving of mistakes.

I also use the tiniest of brushes when I paint so each painting tends to take many hours to complete.

I love painting animals, botanicals, and people with as much detail as I can get. I especially love the study of eyes as they express so much depth and life.

My background is in landscape design, so with the love and knowledge of plants I can transfer their unique beauty onto paper.

It is truly amazing how intricate God has made our world, especially flowers and plants. My talent is a gift from God— I don’t have any formal training but can reproduce what I see. I also love the joy my commissioned pet portraits bring when I deliver them to their owners.

Born and raised in Folsom, CA, I grew up in a time when Folsom was very rural.

Nature was something I was in tune with from an early age. My interest in art began as a child.

I have a very supportive husband who helps me with many art events, and even makes frames for me!

I have two daughters and a stepfamily which includes 8 grandchildren. I am at a very sweet spot in life.

Enjoying retirement includes other hobbies as well. I enjoy music and I study piano, hiking, bike riding and occasional pickleball.

Currently my art is for sale in the Wild Pine Gift Shop in Graeagle, CA where we visit frequently.

In a solo art show in Graeagle I raised and donated over $600.00 to fire victims in Plumas County.

I recently completed an art exhibit at the Flour Garden Bakery in Auburn. In September I will be presenting some new art at the Mohawk Resource and Library Center in Graeagle, CA. The way I begin a painting starts first with 'inspiration' and by always snapping pictures of the places I visit.

The techniques I use to design, harmonize, and define are always evolving. I find it helpful to limit my color palette, and to grid my canvas to find the sweet spots!

Blending paint directly on the canvas makes a fresh look A loose stroke with two colors just “feels good”. Using colors that vibrate is important.

Born in Omaha, Nebraska my time there was brief as the family relocated to southern California due to his father accepting a career opportunity with Lockheed Aircraft Corporation.

The love of books was instilled through my mother who was a librarian.

Raised in the Southern California State education system with a focus on art in early school years, I achieved a BA in two-dimensional art, with an emphasis in drawing from California State University Northridge.

With minimal instruction in painting, I am basically self-taught. I applied visual skills to theatre arts as a set, costume and wig designer.

Performing arts included: acting , singing , and dancing in regional theatre. In 1993 a trip to Paris was inspirational and awakened the desire to paint. In 2003 began attending workshops of the nationwide organization, The Plein Air Painters of America

The love of paint was inspired by talented contemporary artist/teachers as: George Strickland, Ken Backhaus, Ken Auster, Jean Perry, Phil Levine, Kim English and others.

This was the beginning of works in oils and watercolors--using methods learned and continuing to develop individualistic artistic style.

For 30 years enjoyed painting in the Northwest region around Portland,Oregon and have recently relocated to California.

Work is currently represented by The Lawrence Gallery of Lake Oswego, OR. among others in California.

Having won ribbons and regional honors as well, have been a member of the Alla Prima of Portland, Oregon, The American Impressionists Society, and the Oregon Society of Artists.

My love for art started long ago. Both parents were involved in art. My father was a photographer and my mother grew up in San Francisco studying art at the San Francisco Art Institute.

Many of her fellow students are famous for the Bay Area Figurative Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

She painted with oils and watercolor well into her 90’s. Her oil paintings were recently displayed at Mills Station Art & Culture Center in Rancho Cordova (the MACC).

My father was an avid photographer. He was active in photography groups in Nevada City.

‘ Many of our family Sundays growing up were visiting the art museums in San Francisco. Even as a child I was fascinated by the art and history. I still love visiting the art museums in San Francisco, Washington D.C and Paris.

My formal education is in health education, nutrition, chemistry, and business. I started actively painting when I retired after 33 years from the U.S. Department of Veteran’s Affairs as a Procurement Analyst.

I don’t have a formal education in art though I have taken many live art workshops at the Sacramento Fine Art Center and Sierra College.

Favorite watercolor workshops were with Birgit O’Connor, Dale Laitinen, Iain Steward, Jean Haines, Ted Nuttal, Lian Quan Zhen, Michael Holter, Sterling Edwards.

I enjoy gardening. Succulents and pottery inspire me to paint. I love the variation of colors and textures of plants and pottery.

Succulents in my backyard were the inspiration for my watercolor painting “Succulents and Cherub.” I love the birds in our backyard.

I have two degrees in music; however, I have always enjoyed museums and galleries and both my grandmothers painted although in oils. I played the French horn professionally and taught for more years than I can remember.

When my husband retired, he had always enjoyed drawing so I signed him up for a watercolor class near where we lived in southern California. He asked me to join him. As it turned out, the teacher, Arturo Escamillo, was wonderful and I loved the class.

We both love to travel and I have loved photography since I was a small child. My uncle gave me my first camera around age 7 and Ive taken pictures ever since.

We enjoy looking at the photos, but even more fun is trying to paint the memories they bring back. We also enjoy the fact that we can turn a rainy day into a sunny day in a painting or move a tree that got in the way in the photograph.

Watercolors let you do a lot of fun things to make your pictures more interesting.

When we travel, we always check the local art stores. A big thrill was visiting the Sennelier Shop on Quai Voltaire in Paris.

My all time favorite purchase was a portable set of Maimeri pan paints I found in Italy. I use Maimeri, Sennelier and lately Daniel Smith paints and like each one for a different reason.

I quickly discovered Escoda brushes and have travel brushes and regular ones.

They keep their points so well. I have a couple synthetic brushes that I use for masking fluid and lifting.

I quickly discovered if you take care of your brushes, they serve a long time.

Karen Sutton - My artistic endeavors are a culmination of my life's experiences, like that feeling you get when you come home. There is an unending range from the mundane to the exciting and even the tragic.

It's in every day that I find my magic, my inspiration, and I feed it into these design ideas and their production, it is how my art comes to life.

The beginning was crayons and a coloring book under the TV table in my home when I was five. A lifetime of producing solutions for the needs of others in an artistic manner; architectural, graphic, any physical medium, artistic event planning, or a simple pencil drawing, because all mediums are my design materials now.

My inspiration comes from sharing my artistic perspective. Drawing is my core need and a pencil is the tool I use to get lost in my art, and wood burning, pyrography, is like the pencil without the smear. It is a slow, careful process that becomes something more than me. Wood is alive and it takes time to find what it will do.

The audience of my art…my artistic dream… is to watch reactions to my art for the first time. With that first look, I can tell if it is successful or of no use and, if it will stay in their minds to grow into a needed view. That view is my satisfaction.

My world of art is full of life and its beauty through my own adventures, ups, downs, and challenges. Its purpose is to fill others with that view. I hope it brings them a memory from their own past to be relived and felt as it was then. As my life goes forward in the art world I hope to teach others to do art in their own way by seeing through my art.

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I discovered my passion for art when one of my college roommates had to draw a portrait for a class assignment and asked me to pose as her subject.

I decided I may as well draw her at the same time, and soon realized that I was getting fulling engulfed in the process as my roommate kept asking, “Are you done yet… Are you done yet?”.

Although hesitant to call it “done”, I eventually gave in to the pleas and we both turned our drawings around to show the room.

The dropped jaws of my roommates made me think that I just might have something here worth pursuing!

I was majoring in computer science and there was no room in my schedule to explore art in school. Soon after I graduated, I signed up for a Sierra College Community Education watercolor class taught by my now dear friend, Gayle.

I remember driving home from that first watercolor class on a total high! I had found something that nourished my soul and I was completely hooked!

I spent the next few years learning more by reading books, taking local classes, and traveling to a couple week long workshops at the Sebastopol art center. When I started my family, I was told by many that I would need to put my art away, and come back to it when my kids were grown.

However, I was not the least bit interested in taking that advice. Although I didn’t have a whole lot of time, I found naptime was my opportunity.

(I may have let them sleep just a “little” longer than I should have!) Once the kids grew out of naps, there were several years where my all my artistic energy went into things like painting murals in the kids’ rooms, and planning the best birthday parties I could by creating hand painted props and staying up all night decorating extravagant cakes.

I couldn’t always find time to be in the studio, but I always found a way to keep my creative side active.