ARTIST’S STATEMENT

In focusing my recent work on landscape, including birds and fish, I am working from two points of view. One informing idea is that of the poet Wendell Berry: “The Peace of Wild Things”. The other idea comes from Thoreau: “in wildness is the preservation of the world”.

I want viewers of my work to feel the wonder of the wild world: its size, its light and shadow, its patterns, its hidden places. In my paintings I am more concerned with portraying a spiritual essence rather than photographic realism. My collages are more playful and abstract, partially dictated by the materials. But always I want to show the wonder of wild things.

Karen Mautner Brumelle

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

- Wendell Berry

BIOGRAPHY

Karen Brumelle is a Vancouver artist and teacher. She studied art at the University of California, Berkeley, and then received an MA in Art Education from UBC. She taught art at Lord Byng Secondary School for ten years, retiring in 2004. Karen is a member of the Vancouver Art Guild, which has an exhibition and sale of members’ work annually in November. Currently she spends her time traveling and painting.

Education & Teaching Positions.