Michael Kareken
1 Trees at Beach 4 (WC Monotype).jpg

Landscapes / 2017-2021

This series of watercolor monotypes was produced in collaboration with the Highpoint Center for Printmaking in Minneapolis. The work focuses on the landscape where I grew up in the Pacific Northwest.  The monotypes were made by painting with watercolor on a thin polyester plate which was then transferred to a sheet of paper on the press.  I used both additive and subtractive processes to make the images, putting down washes and marks that were allowed to dry before being lifted and revised by re-wetting the plate.

Information about the series is available from The Highpoint Center for Printmaking.

 

Landscapes / 2017-2021

Trees at Beach 4, watercolor monotype, 22.5” x 29.5”

This series depicts the landscape where I grew up in the Pacific Northwest. The work focuses on locations that have special meaning to me: the woods and shoreline of the San Juan Islands and the Olympic Peninsula.  As a child I was overwhelmed by the drama of this landscape - its scale and ever-shifting quality of light and atmosphere made a tremendous impression on me.  Those early experiences remain vivid in my imagination, and the work is meant to convey the beauty and mystery I felt and still feel in those places. 

Much of the work was executed in black and white, partly in response to the tonal quality of the Northwest landscape, but primarily to establish a psychological tone and evoke a sense of memory, reflection, and distance on the subject. Many of images take a subjective point of view of the landscape - looking up, looking down, or moving in close – as a way to suggest a “child’s-eye” sense of scale or perspective.