Developing her ideas
Karen Harwood paints from an educator’s point of view. “My painting is evolving,” said Harwood, “all of my training has made me very conscious about getting it right.”
Her art training began 10 years ago when a friend invited her to an art class. Harwood, 58, would have probably started earlier but a bad art teacher turned her off in the eighth grade. “He was very negative and uninspired. Bad teachers have a way of destroying a student’s interest.”
Instead of art, she went into Russian studies and political science and graduated from the University of Washington. She aspired to do something politically important in the ‘60s but instead chose to further her education with a master’s degree in counseling and a law degree from Gonzaga University.
She worked in various fields as well as taught, moving from politics, to business, to law, and finally, to art.
Working at GU as a teacher and associate dean, she took advantage of a tuition waiver and began taking every art class available. Now, an adjunct professor, she teaches one or two classes a year in organizational leadership where she incorporates creativity and imagination.
The creative process is similar for organizations and art. In both the development of an idea begins with a vision. A Valley resident since 1980, Harwood chooses to paint in a studio space in the Jundt Art Building at GU. It gives her the feel of an academic artist who refines skills in a learning environment. Other artists work in nearby cubicles. “It is an ongoing art show,” said Harwood, “It’s engaging, and I can watch the process that other artists go through.”
Her current painting style is still life, or the abstract representation of it. Much of her work has the feel of student pieces, very deliberate and correct in application. The turning point was her most recent series of paintings that uses neckties as its subject.
The series is called “The Secret Lives of Ties.” Giving life to the simple prop, individual titles include “Snakes,” “Rebel” and “Coffee Break.”
“I lose interest in the tight, fine details that still life calls for,” said Harwood. “The tie series has enabled me to show more of my personality.” Quirky and whimsical, the pieces are expressive and unique. Mixing technique and playfulness, the work represents the active thinking of an inanimate object.
Harwood’s mental mentor is the artist Georgia O’Keeffe, whose still life creations are more of the essence of such items.
As Harwood’s confidence grows, so will her style. “I wish I had gone into art and psychology. I would definitively have stuck with art if I had had better teachers in junior high.”
Though she has started later than she hoped, she is satisfied with her artistic expressions. Even the classes that she teaches in leadership allow her to teach others how to expand on their creative abilities.