Karen Kain attended Brown University and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her first degree was in performance, and her second was in painting and drawing. She has performed on the stages of Steppenwolf and the Court in Chicago, and taught, performed, and directed with Shakespeare and Company on the East coast. For the last ten years she has been focusing solely on fine art, and her only performance takes the form of large gestural paintings, sometimes with a four-foot brush.She apprenticed in Asian calligraphy with Kazuaki Tanahashi, a master Japanese brush painter and noted translator of Zen texts. She works quickly from the live model, sometimes wielding brushes in both hands at once, eyes intent on the model.

In the last two years, she has been developing her own forms by integrating the calligraphic brushstrokes into abstract figurative work. In doing so, she is creating a new take on the old notion of "characters" as they exist in Asian calligraphy. There, forms perfected over hundreds of years are executed and re-embodied by the spiirit of the individual artist. Kain is simultaneously perfecting her own abstracted forms and filling them with life, all in the space of under a minute. This demands tremendous focus and clarity of mind, which is evident, to the trained viewer, in the power of the brushstoke. Her brush speaks a universal language: that of the "joie de vivre": the joy of life. She is a firm believer in community, and was a founder of the Rogers Park Arts Council and the Rogers Park Artists' Salon.

ARTIST STATEMENT
I work from a live model, and paint with both hands at once, keeping my eyes on the model rather than the paper. This allows me to feel and sculpt the space on the page by sensing the ever-changing space between my brushes. The composiion is felt, not seen. There is no time for adjusting and no possiblity for future corrections anway, as the work is done in less than a minute, and in ink! When I am not fully present, the brush will "show me up" on the page and make me humble once again. I much prefer this sink-or-swim honesty. Indeed, when working within such strict parameters not all the work succeeds, but when it does, there is life on the page.
Artists aim to capture life. Some paint what they see. Some paint what they feel. Some paint how they feel about what they see. I aim to paint the spark of life itself. Some Zen monks a few hundred years ago wished to do the same thing. They used brush painting as a very direct meditation practice and as a teaching tool to convey enlightenment. They saw that, just as a soaring musical score or an acrobat somersaulting in mid-air can make us feel more alive, viewing a mark in a painting can make us experience the making of that mark, and feel the life of the maker.

The Asian brush is well-suited to this task because it responds to the subtlest movement and records every nuance of touch. It is very nearly seismographic in a trained hand, however the training process is lengthy. In China one might spend a year working on the first lesson: a single line. The brush becomes a witness, a perfect mirror to the moment. By looking at the tail of a comet, astronomers learn about the comet. Similarly, by looking at the trail of a brush, we can learn about someone's character. What kind of spirit would make that kind of mark?

To capture the quintessence of life in as few strokes as possible is both hard and easy. First the "easy" part: surrender entirely. I begin with meditation. I empty myself entirely, letting go of personality, perfection, the immediate gratification of showing off skill by creating likeness. Next the hard part: while surrendering, I must fully engage all the senses--all the channels for discernment, and let my abilities and training have their way with me to fully express the simple truth of that moment. "An intention so pure and concentrated that nothing is forced...the artist enters so throughoughly into what he is creating that no conscious effort, no distance between the two, remains."

So, I paint a line. A brave line. Or a timid line. But a line that expresses at the core what I experience in that moment. Sometimes the line is happy enough by itself, so I stop. Sometimes it begs for company. There are ten thousand lines I could draw next to the original one. All but a handful of those will weaken or neutralize the first. The challenge is to effortlessly and without hesitation paint the line that will shine in its own right, while brightening the first.
All of my work stems from this foundation. Although I may go on to add color or work with printing processes to add other elements, it's hard to mess with the simple power of black ink on white silk or paper.