The Reluctant Master

It’s no surprise that artist Karen Knutson is a member and signature member of a half dozen watercolor societies. What then is surprising is how she first felt about the medium.

“I didn’t even like watercolor,” she says, when a friend asked her to take a community watercolor class together. But she liked the social part immediately, and that first class led the beginning of a major life change (even if it took a little time to get good). “I hid my paintings under the couch,” she says of those first attempts. “That’s how bad they were.”

After a few years of painting with her watercolors every day, she found the freedom to make her paintings unique. She began to see that the strength of her paintings didn’t entirely depend on what they were paintings of, or how closely a given painting resembled the subject. She expanded to other watermedia and eventually came fully into mixed media, adjusting her style and taking the leap of faith that her audience would come with her.

Karen Knutson, “Wires Crossed,” watercolor on paper, 14 x 21 in.

It worked. Much of her work is abstraction now, which she loves for how it lets her explore the “wonderful textures and color discoveries” of her media, as she says. Ever more collectors are drawn to her paintings by their color, composition and design and what she thinks of as “the peaceful nature” of the work. “I like my paintings to be different than ‘normal paintings’,” she says, “anything that will make the viewer take a second look and be drawn into the painting!”

Her “secret,” if she were to have one, would have to be her playful approach to color and texture and her intuitive sense of design. “I used to be attracted to paintings with unusual colors, but now I’m drawn to paintings with dynamic design,” she says.

“First and foremost, I like to have fun while I paint, and I’m constantly trying out new things, so that I will grow as an artist,” she says on her website. “I feel like the luckiest person alive to be able to do something that I love so much!

Karen Knutson, “Sailing Through Life,” watermedia, collage.

“I truly love being an artist and feel very blessed to actually get paid to do something that I love so much. My routine consisted of teaching workshops, participating in art fairs in the summer months, and painting commission paintings and original paintings for the galleries in the winter months. In 2023, I decided to take a break from teaching so that I could spend more time painting the paintings I wanted, and also spend more time with family and plein air painting.”

Today Karen teaches across the country to sold-out workshops and continues to paint just about every day. “I feel like the luckiest person alive to be able to do something that I love so much,” she says.