Karen Francis
"Karen explores many styles in her work, with oil being her medium of preference. She has sold abstractions, portraits, and landscapes and also enjoys creating computer enhanced digital images.
Her most unusual work is what she calls "Interactive Conceptual " projects. These urban public art projects typically involve large numbers of people working together on a creation of an educational nature such as "A Valentine For The Earth", a
multimedia ecological art sculpture designed for Ecomedia in DC in 1993 in a collaboration with a sculptor and the public in Washington DC. It was also recorded as a tv program. In 2006 she had a one-woman art exhibit, Global Warning, in Memphis.
In addition to painting, Ms. Francis produced a number of cable tv programs on the arts in Merrifield, Virginia during the timeframe of 1989 - 1996. She placed art of about sixty artists on the set of the program Metropolitan Magazine, and then hosted and interviewed artists and community leaders on the program Heart of the Matter at the FCAC public access station.
A Memphian, Karen graduated from KHS and Rhodes College and attended University of Memphis in the summers. Following grad school at the University of Missouri she taught at the University of Georgia in Athens for two years then relocated to the Washington DC area after her youngest brother died when a drunk driver in his 20’s smashed into his car. Then she studied art at the Corcoran School of Art in DC, the Art League School in Alexandria, VA, The New York Art Students League, and George Mason Univ. in VA. She returned to TN in 2005.
Ms. Francis' paintings have been included in numerous juried exhibitions and were awarded prizes early in her art career. Her works are in many collections throughout the U.S. Marquis' Who's Who in the World, Who's Who in America and Who's Who in American Women have included Ms. Francis' biographical data for many years."
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