Portland Fine Art

Acrylic painter Karen Silve currently paints and resides in Portland, Oregon. She studied initially under the auspices of Italian abstract painter Alvin Sella at the University of Alabama. Then she traveled to France and studied at the Leo Marchutz School in Aix-en-Provence. Upon returning from France, Silve attended graduate school at the University of Denver in Colorado where she had the opportunity to explore nature and its relationship to abstract thought.

Silve has exhibited throughout the United States and Europe. She is currently exhibiting in Qatar as part of the Art in Embassies Program. Early in Silve’s painting career, she exhibited at the Jemison-Carnegie Heritage Hall in Alabama and the Tuscaloosa Performing Art Center. Since then she has exhibited at different Galleries and Universities including The Institute for American Universities in Aix-en-Provence, France and the Portland Center for the Performing Arts.

Silve’s inspiration comes from how we respond to and interact with nature. She focuses on being present and “in the moment” while exploring her surroundings; keeping all of her senses aware and alive. She fills her paintings with rich color, aggressive brushwork and drips running off the top, bottom and sides of her canvases. She’ll paint layer after layer of color until each painting reaches it’s natural conclusion.

William Zimmer, a past contributing editor for the New York Times, wrote about Silve’s work: “Later in the 20th century, gesture served to convey the immediacy of action. De Kooning was not a full-fledged action painter, but his figures, especially the trapping Women that inspire Silve, have solidity with gestural action as its underpinning. The notion of the spontaneous gesture lives in Silve’s painting as the elusive and fleeting passages of music to which she gives form.”

Silve’s work is held by hundreds of private collections nationally and internationally as well as in numerous corporate collections throughout the Portland area. The artist currently maintains two studios, one in Portland, Oregon, and the other in Provence, France.