Sea psalms
Karen Blackwood, Illumination, oil, 16 x 20.
This story was featured in the October 2019 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art October 2019 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.
ONCE A YEAR or so, Karen Blackwood likes to paint a sunrise scene. But generally no more than that. “If I did it more, I’d be afraid it would seem like a stylistic gimmick,” says the Newburyport, MA, artist, who predominantly paints seascapes cropped in around frothy, splashing waves. Thus, for Blackwood, sunrise scenes often involve capturing the day’s first exquisite rays of sunlight illuminating the surf. “Sunrises are the hardest to paint and the most fun to paint,” she says. “It’s hard to have that many intense colors together and still create harmony. It’s almost mind-boggling. I smile when I paint those scenes because it makes me feel good. You almost hear the angels sing.”
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- Karen Blackwood, Fury, oil, 20 x 30.
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- Karen Blackwood, Green Crest, oil, 12 x 16.
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- Karen Blackwood, Rolling Surf, oil, 12 x 24.
One moving example that easily evokes a chorus of cherubim is ILLUMINATION, a striking sunrise scene in which Blackwood depicts a backlit, pirouetting wave. The piece garnered first place in Oil Painters of America’s Spring Online Showcase. “There’s just no end to the way you can approach water,” muses the artist. “In the sea, there’s an abstraction—an ability to focus not so much on things, but on emotion, energy, and color notes. Even though I’m trying to depict the realism of a wave, it’s really its essence that gives me a feeling.”
Blackwood is teaching a workshop this month entitled Painting the Essence of the Sea at the Lyme Art Association in Connecticut. The sea, however, wasn’t always the artist’s forte. When she was a fine-art student at the University of New Hampshire, her oil-painting studies concentrated on figure and still-life painting. After graduation, she worked at an ad agency in New York before moving with her husband to California, where they stayed for 18 years, and where Blackwood dedicated herself fully to painting, gradually introducing landscapes into her oeuvre. By the time she returned to the East Coast, she had painted her fair share of seascapes. But upon settling in Newburyport, just a 10-minute drive from the coast, she began visiting the seashore faithfully.
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- Karen Blackwood, Seacoast, oil, 12 x 24.
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- Karen Blackwood, Storm at Sea, oil, 10 x 16.
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- Karen Blackwood, Surging Wave, oil, 12 x 16.
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- Karen Blackwood, The Surge, oil, 14 x 18.
Although primarily a studio painter, “plein-air painting is when I soak up information,” notes Blackwood, whose appreciation for the mercurial sea is as deep as its depths. Influenced by everything from storms to tidal rhythms, “the ocean has so many moods,” she says. “With the sea, that ability to react to it intuitively is what keeps me coming back to it.” —Kim Agricola
representation
Susan Powell Fine Art, Madison, CT; Marine Arts Gallery, Bonita Springs, FL; Todd Bonita Art Gallery, Portsmouth, NH; www.karenblackwoodfineart.com.
This story was featured in the October 2019 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art October 2019 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.
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