I spent this past year in Provence, rediscovering my roots. Having visited Provence since I was a child, I have very fond memories at my grandparent’s home from playing in the fields to jumping into my great-grandfather’s fountain filled will very cold spring water. In my early 20’s, I went to the Leo Marchutz School of Painting in Aix-en-Provence. During that time, I fell in love with painting and grew to find this region as a spiritual haven. This past visit was the longest at over 10 months. It’s a place where I feel grounded and I’ve recently decided to make Provence my primary studio space. 

This new body of work explores my search for where I want to be and how I see my life. This past year, I found myself contemplating over pathways during my hikes, walks, and drives. Many times I drove to one of the gorges in my region, found a hiking path, and started walking on it. There was always a little fear that I had to overcome: snakes, spiders, wild boar, or even people in remote areas. Also, the fear of being lost and not found. 

Generally I didn’t know where I was going, nor what was around the next bend. There were many obstacles in the paths. If there was a fork in the road, I had to make the difficult choice of which direction to take. I found that once I stepped firmly in one direction, I followed it. If there was a large rock, I had to figure out how to climb over it; if a tree had fallen, I had to figure out how to get on the other side of it. Surprisingly, I never saw these obstacles as fears, but rather how to develop a strategy to get over or around them. Many times the path took me back to where I started. Other times, I found a special place in which I sat, meditated, and wrote.

These emotional responses and experiences started to coalesce into a theme of pathways with crossroads and obstacles. In turn, this became a metaphor for my search for my next steps in life. I feel like I’m taking a big step forward by going back to my roots: my heritage, where my grandfather was raised, the french culture, and my art school. Now, I am firmly planting a foot in Provence and almost feel like I’ve always lived here. 

I find the works have a sense of space; a foreground, middle ground, and background, while being non-representational. My hope is to evoke the sensibilities of exploration, peace and resolve.

I’m very excited about these works. Thank you for reading! Please feel free to share or email me with questions

Very Warmly, Karen Silve

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