ARTISTS BIO

Originally from Vermont, Laura Karetzky has been a New York based artist for the past 19 years. She has maintained a traditional North Light studio in DUMBO since 1997.

Laura Karetzky has studied figurative art extensively. She has degrees and training from The New York Academy of Figurative Art, Carnegie-Mellon University, School of Visual Arts, The New York Studio School, Rhode Island School of Design, and an intensive one-year program in Florence, Italy.

Although Karetzky's paintings maintain a deceivingly tranquil environment, they have an unsettling inner strength. Her work explores the psychological nuance within seemingly quiet moments. "I am interested in a quietly confident voice or in how a whisper can be louder than a scream." Laura Karetzky sculpts her images with light, using her own variation on a traditional "gray" dead palette. Yet by pushing the contrast of dark and light, she creates a strong graphic composition making her images both subtle and powerful.

Karetzky's painting LeanBack was selected for the 2006 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition exhibition at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C. She has received awards for excellence in art from the Silvermine Guild and is recipient of the First Place Award from the Ames Mansion Museum. She received merit scholarship for her graduate work at the New York Academy of Art and is recipient of the 2006 Rotunda/BCAT Artist Residency. Her work is collected widely.

"You may be small but you certainly take up a lot of space."

I often use backlight or silhouetting. In this way I can treat the subject as simply another architectural element in the space, and force the viewer to look past the traditional focus of a painting and into the deep background. To be far sighted is a visual condition in which one is able to see distant objects better than those at close range. This implies that an individual has developed blinders and cannot see what is right in front of them, whether it be literally or metaphysically.

I use the composition to enhance this juxtaposition by repeating patterns and shapes. In a virtually realistic environment, abstract patterns prevail. This technique compels two viewings for the observer and often finds one coming in close to analyze and then stepping back; thus there is momentum, time, space and intimacy in my paintings.

This work, then, is about relationships. It examines how roles flip from dominant to submissive. It is about push and pull, polar opposites, contrasting emotions. It speaks about vulnerability, trust, guilt and betrayal. It enables me to confront the subtleties of a relationship in more symbolic terms.