Featured Artist

Each month or so we welcome a local artist who makes our Spa Walls come alive with color and serenity! Their art is shared with us to enjoy and purchase. Come in this month and meet Karen Anderson Schwartz!

Karen Anderson Schwartz

Watercolors & Mixed Watermedia

Karen Anderson Schwartz is a watermedia artist living in Williamsburg, Virginia. Originally from California, she moved to Virginia in 1981. In addition to her Virginia landscapes, Karen has painted many scenes from her trips to England, Ireland, Cuba and Guatemala as well as her visits to family in Tennessee, Texas, and the San Francisco bay area. She enjoys painting the people, landscapes, and architecture of the places she's visited, and paints and draws from studio models, sketches and photographs she's taken.

Karen earned her B.A. in Fine Arts from San Diego State University with a concentration in painting and printmaking. Watercolor painting has been the focus of her work for the last several years. She began studying watercolor with Jan Ledbetter in 1997, and has since studied with some of country's leading watercolorists and collage painters, including Alex Powers, Gerald Brommer, Polly Hammet, Jean Grasdorf, Linda Stevens-Moyers, Judi Betts, Doug Walton, Cheng Khee Chee, Skip Lawrence, Christopher Schink, and Phyllis Greenway.

Her work has been exhibited in shows at the Charles H. Taylor Arts Center in Hampton, the Poquoson Public Library, This Century Art Gallery in Williamsburg, the Williamsburg Public Library, and at the Reves Center for International Studies at the College of William & Mary, as well as "Art on the Square" and at "An Occasion for the Arts" in Williamsburg. Karen has been accepted to numerous Virginia Watercolor Society Annual Exhibitions and is a signature artist member of the VWS. She has received awards for her work in several of This Century Art Gallery's Annual Members Shows, the Virginia Watercolor Society's 2005 Annual Exhibition, An Occasion for the Arts-2005, and the Central Virginia Watercolor Guild-2007 & 2012. She is a participating artist and board member of This Century Art Gallery in Williamsburg, and has taught a mixed media/collage class through TCAG.

In addition to painting and volunteer work, Karen works part time at the College of William & Mary.

Karen's paintings are exhibited at Prince George Art & Frame in Williamsburg, Virginia and in the Charles Center in Blow Hall, at the College of William & Mary. To see more of her work, visit her web site at www.karenschwartzart.com or contact her by email at karenschwartzart@cox.net.