Works by Karen Phillips Curran can be seen on display at Tay River Gallery in Perth, Canada.
The article is reprinted below with permission from Bermuda Sun.
| 3/23/2007 12:10:00 PM | |
| 'Bermuda's the reference point for all my work' Twenty years ago Karen Phillips-Curran was a struggling artist in Ottawa. Today, one of her full-sheet watercolours can cost you up to $1,500. Ms Phillips-Curran looks back over two decades of painting and at one moment in 1987 that she says forever changed the direction of her art - coming to Bermuda. Inspired by a book she was reading which encouraged young artists to travel, Ms Phillips-Curran decided to visit Bermuda in the hope of finding her muse. There was only one problem - she was broke. After several weeks of careful negotiating, she persuaded some close friends to fund her trip to Bermuda. Ten friends paid $100 each and, in return, they asked that she paint them each a different portrait of the island. "What happened then, in hindsight, was a pivotal moment. It manipulated the whole direction of my art" Ms Phillips-Curran explained. Inspired by the landscape, colours and traditional architecture of the island's buildings, she says that her trip to Bermuda was when she really 'came into her own' artistically. Her long-time friend and fellow-artist, Emma Ingham Dounouk, a Bermuda resident, first met Ms Phillips-Curran on that pioneering trip in 1987 and says that she has been amazed at the transformation of her friend's work ever since that first visit. Ms Dounock said: "There is something magnetic about the colours for her here in Bermuda. The shapes, the textures, how one line breaks over the other, her eye has become so well-trained to the nuances that are so distinctly Bermuda." The trip put her artwork on the walls of the Windjammer Gallery - where she's been showing for 17 years. Her paintings could also be seen in the 'Pretty in Pink' exhibition which recently showed in Dockyard. She now paints all over the world. Last spring she set down her easel to paint the churches of Venice, the mountains of Sicily and the olive-orchards of Greece, but says her mind was always somewhere else: "Bermuda's my reference point for all my artwork. I see Bermuda everywhere." Her greatest career hurdle came two years ago when she was diagnosed with cancer of the iris. She was devastated at first and noticed it was beginning to affect her work. Despite radiation surgery the tumour still remains in her eye. But she remains optimistic and still runs her own business in Ottawa called Ferrytale Studio. And, on the side, she helps paint the sets at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, which she has been doing for ten years. She has more plans to travel overseas but says she always knows there is a place for her in Bermuda. Link to original article in online edition of the Bermuda Sun is http://www.bermudasun.org/main.asp?SectionID=9&SubSectionID=230&ArticleID=33092 | |
