Karen Kunc
Karen Kunc, Mars, 2005, etching woodcut, 13" x 29", photographed by John Nollendorfs
Karen Kunc was born in Omaha, NE in 1952. She is a printmaker and Professor of Art at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her artwork is featured in collections and museums across the United States, Europe and Japan.
Her personal style as an artist is directly related to the medium she chooses—which is color woodcuts. She began to use woodcut, a relief printmaking technique, after trying other methods like serigraphy or intaglio. Her images have been influenced by the work of the German Expressionists and also by the tradition of Japanese woodblock prints. According to the artist, her imagery is “nature-based abstraction” that also reflects her own unique physical involvement with the medium — how she makes her marks on the wood surface, how she decides on the interacting shapes. Subject matter for her work is drawn from natural sources such as plants, cloud forms in the sky, or landscapes.
Her method of working on her art is both spontaneous and planned. She works on sketches to allow the creative process to flow, but then she organizes each step she will take to construct her finished design. As her images take shape, she is open to new possibilities of color, space, or texture. She usually works on one work of art at a time, and creates about 14 prints for each edition.
