Flower Power March 16 - May 12

Posted by: Karen Payton

Karen Payton attended her first Grateful Dead concert in the late ’80s, where the tie-dyes, textiles, and flowing fabrics filled her soul as much as the music. She fell in love with doing embroidery, and applied this to her art.

Instead of brushstrokes, Karen uses needle and thread to paint her canvas with textiles. With different colors of thread blending together, Karen is able to create beautifully nuanced pieces that might actually look like paintings from far away. But get a little closer and you can see the zigzag lines of stitching and textured surface of hand-dyed fabrics.

She started out making small embroidered works, but galleries turned her down due to the small size. So she played with adding fabric and machine stitching and scaled up, forming a process that took many years to become what it is today.

To see more of Karen's work, visit her website @ www.karenpayton.com