Karen Taylor has taken herself from her upstairs studio at Space Gallery to her new studio and gallery at 70a Guyton St. She calls it Street Level StudioGallery and it is where she produces and shows her work.
"It's an open studio," she says. There is a space near the shop window where she will display the work of other artists from next month. Right now, her own work is there. "I am my first guest artist."
There will be no up front costs for those artists but some of the commission will go to charities of Karen's choosing, one of which is breast cancer research.
Karen is from Wellington but spent time on the Kapiti Coast where she took up ceramics.
"I ended up being a tutor at Coastal Ceramics ... I used to cut and decorate slipware, which is clay that's made in moulds."
To gain a qualification she enrolled in Whitireia, where, as an artist, you experience all media, which is where she got into painting.
Karen also worked at City Voice newspaper in Wellington where she experienced almost all aspects of the trade, including office work and admin, writing book and film reviews and more. "It was a whole new thing for me." She did that for five years, then, when the paper closed, tried various jobs in the public sector, ending up in HR, dealing with employment relations.
She later trained as an ESOL teacher, then a cancer diagnosis made her and her partner have a rethink. Art took over.
Karen and her partner Steve moved to Whanganui in December last year, after spending quite a few trips to check it out. They found a home in Whanganui East.
Needing a place to paint, and knowing about Space from their trips to Artists Open Studios, Karen approached Sarah Narine and soon occupied a workspace upstairs above the gallery.
She says she really liked it there but it had been a lifelong dream to have her own place. Sarah gave her full support.
"I'm an intuitive artist," says Karen. "I paint internal landscapes ... I just paint. I start to put paint on ..." It evolves as she works. "I do like acrylics, but I'm been using cold wax lately." She has also been using polyfilla as texture on paintings.
"I like experimenting — I like painting, collage, printmaking, clay ..."
Her work is reasonably priced. "I want people like me to be able to afford it."
She says she has fulfilled a dream.
