About
My art feeds my soul and expresses the utter joy I feel when wandering the mountainsides surrounding my Montana log cabin. My bright and playful watercolor paintings celebrate nature as the aspen trees dance before me, the coyotes sing, and the wind whispers secrets in my ears. Come take a walk with me. Explore nature’s curiosities, imagine a world healthy, wild, and whole; look, listen, and discover for yourself. -Karen
A Little About My Art…
My bright and playful watercolor paintings are painted on a specially primed canvas that allows me to achieve the saturated colors I like while maintaining the watercolor feel. There is always an element of surprise when working in watercolors and happy mistakes are frequent. When I am done, the canvases are sprayed with an archival varnish and the paintings can then be treated just like an oil painting and do not need to be behind glass like traditional watercolors.
Recently I have been experimenting with mixed media and creating pieces on wood and paper that combine watercolor, colored pencil, soft pastels, and cold wax. These pieces have a final finish of either cold wax or archival varnish and also do not need to be behind glass.
A little about me…
An appreciation of both nature and art has always been a part of Karen Savory’s life. Growing up along the Niagara River in Western NY, she could never get enough of either. She would beg her dad to take her camping and fishing with the boys and then beg her mom to let her “help” with sewing and painting projects.
She doodled incessantly as a student filling the margins of her schoolwork with a menagerie of characters, amusing herself as well as her schoolmates. Ultimately, deciding on a career that didn’t have the term “starving” associated with it, she studied to become a physical therapist where she continued her drawing as a tool to learn muscle attachments and nerve interventions. Upon graduation she moved west to work as a traveling therapist where she fell in love with the landscape and all things wild. Together, with her husband Van, she spent most of her free time taking months long backpacking and cycle touring trips into and around the mountains that held her heart. As she learned more about the mysteries of nature she developed an ever-deeper appreciation of its wonders. Her sketches quickly evolved from quirky cartoon characters into illustrations of her new environment and its inhabitants.
In 2014, no longer fearing starvation, she retired from physical therapy and now works as a professional artist creating bright whimsical wildlife paintings that are filled with joy. Living in a small log cabin in the foothills of the Bitterroot mountains of Montana, she is surrounded by inspiration from the wonderful people that share their lives with her to the awesome beauty of nature. In addition to selling her work in more traditional ways, her art is used to support the protection of wild places and open lands through partnerships with her local land trust and several environmental groups. Today, as she continues to explore the world, she knows just how lucky she is to combine her longtime passions as she creates art that shares her love of nature.