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KARIN BIRCH

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Karin Birch was born in Point Barrow, Alaska. She works in a hybrid medium of stain painting, hand embroidery and beadwork, creating densely detailed biomorphic abstractions. Her work explores memory, nature and repetition as a process of meditation. She studied at Corcoran School of Art and Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, and has exhibited in the US and abroad, including the Museum of Art and Design, the National Gallery of the Craft Council of Ireland and the Delaware Center for Contempory Arts. Karin’s work is in the permanent collections of the Boston Museum of Fine Art, the Renwick Gallery, and the US Embassy in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Her work has been reviewed in The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Washington Post, The Baltimore City Paper and featured in Home & Design Magazine. She’s had 16 solo shows to date and received numerous grants and awards. Karin maintains a studio in Brunswick, MD.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I work in a hybrid medium of painting, hand embroidery and hand beadwork that combines the authority of painting and the articulation of drawing to create densely detailed biomorphic abstractions: mesmerizing meditations inspired by memory, nature and time. Starting with color, which is always an emotional response to what I am feeling or thinking, I paint fluid, fast and free. The process is often unplanned and the results are generally accidental. This sets a counterpoint to the stitching that comes next. Stitching is slow, considered and precise. Small areas are stitched, growing incrementally with time and repetition. As the stitching builds, ideas come and a subconscious landscape emerges, playing out little dramas. Abstraction reveals pattern, movement and visual relationships to perceive and ponder. Flowers are not flowers but ubiquitous shapes, repeatedly making new shapes. Thread and beads have an alluring, beautiful quality that draws the viewer into the minutia of detail long enough to find space for something more, something to feel and think about, something to make meaning of.