A portfolio website featuring the works of Okanagan artist Karen Ashton
Growing up in Montreal’s vibrant culture provided many opportunities for creative exploration. Montreal, QC, I was always absorbed with drawing or painting. Graduating from Dawson College with a Fine Arts Diploma, and a Graphic Design Certificate from the Montreal Academy of Arts, I continued exploring drawing and painting techniques at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
More recently I have honed my artistic skills, studying with Wilma Stamm’ler here in the Okanagan. My paintings are included in personal, and corporate collections in Canada, and abroad. As well as being an artist, I’m a Certified Professional Accountant, rather the definition of a “creative accountant”.
My art comes from a powerful, persistent love for painting and drawing. Painting has always been a way for me to connect with what matters. Mixing the colors, preparing the surface, putting brush to paper, brings me to a quiet place. These creative rituals become a meditation of what I find particularly beautiful, interesting or humorous about the subject. It’s all about the happiness that comes from creating something.
Primary sources of inspiration are from nature: flowers, trees, skies, reflections in ponds. Color plays a key role, often giving natural objects a playful or surreal quality. There may be a visual riddle, which might resolve otherwise complete ambiguity, for example a leaf melting free from an icy pond resolves an upside-down reflection of trees, or a river off in the distance suggests a faraway canyon in an abstract landscape.