AboutKarrie

“Sometimes we just have to look, to feel and to be alive in anothers energy. The energy we feel with connection.”

Reviewing Los Angeles, California Artist Karrie Ross’ work will take you there, into the energy, safely, revealing a thought, passion, a risk or a question that drives her to create, to be totally one with the painting long after it’s completed to it’s balance and seems to just vibrate for you.

Enter a life of spiraling energy that takes you on a journey exploring your connective electricity. Get swept up in the moment by women dancing, bowing or seeming to fall into an intended daydream. Spirals filling a space where the vibration bounces off the canvas and into your consciousness. An accidental drip or a group of Druids gathering in a mystical forest? The swirl of line and within your imagination a flower appears! Each series conveys within it’s vision a lasting perspective the artist wants to share of their existence, encouraging you to explore the parts within yourself that respond to her’s.

No great artist ever sees things as they really are.
If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

—
Oscar Wilde

These are some of the whimsical artwork series created by artist Karrie ROSS in the expression and sharing of her journey in life. Karrie is a Los Angeles born, Southern California artist. One of her first memories is of an earthquake at the same time a bee flew down her blouse as she ran to her mother calling her… she was around 4 years old! And we wonder where she gets all this stuff about energy! Early on a love of art and pleasing ‘collectors’ came naturally to her … when she was 7 years old you could find her spending her school recesses drawing pictures of women in Cinderella-type dresses for all her school friends… she was greatly admired for this ability!

“I could never figure out why my schoolmates didn’t draw these images for themselves. I had a ball with it, making thin waists and “flip” hair.” Karrie recalls. “But, I didn’t become a figurative artist, my life took me to mixing words and images in another way…”

In high school Karrie found herself putting more art in her life. She was on the yearbook staff out shooting photos and designing the layout of pages for them to be displayed on. When she ran for Home Coming Queen her posters were praised and desired… some were even taken off the wall and she was asked to autograph them! She enjoyed the crafts of collage and block cutting and one of her works “If Birds Can Fly… Why Can’t I” was featured in the Bullocks Yearly High School Art competition… encouraging her to keep exploring.

In college, she noticed that mixing words and images worked for her, they seemed to complete each other. She found that she naturally added words to her art pieces… so it was a career in Advertising, Marketing and Branding that surged side-by-side with her multiple crafts of stained glass, quilting, jewelry making and her fine art surrealistic pen & ink drawing, collage, watercolor, oil and acrylic paintings that filed her life for the next 30 years.

She noticed that the two disciplines of design and fine art were working off each other and as she grew with knowledge and experience in design her fine art grew too. The energy of one transferred within her to the other. She also at this time experienced an accident that caused her to reevaluate how she lived her life. She found herself searching for solutions to heal her back and body and started meditating.  The connection and energy created amazed and fascinated her. Her art started to move in ways it hadn’t before, her perspective of life was changing radically and her awareness of energy creation and dispersion became her main interest. (She eventually learned the arts of  Feng Shui  and Sat Nam Rasayan Energy Healing.)

By the late 1980′s Karrie’s fine art began to take a more dominant place in her life and she was accepted right off to the Beverly Hills Affaire in the Gardens yearly art show. And her work grew and sold consistently over the years until it was noticed by a company that worked with artists and sold their work at High Point. The process of creating a new “line” each 6 months and then producing the art over and over with each order gave Karrie the ability to create quickly and effectively with quality. To this day she is a prolific artist… enjoying each piece in anticipation of the next.

Her work ethic drives her daily and the fact of be being a prolific painter is an example of her drive. This also shows up in the way she supports her Fine Art within her daily life of running a successful online one person graphic design business specializing in the design of books and teaching “How to Create a Web-Presence” for self publishing authors and small publishing companies.

“My art has advanced to a point where I, again can’t live without it there in my daily thoughts, it’s like being passionately IN love… I now allow it to consume me in every way. My art, the IT in my life, is currently the object of my affection in all ways.” Karrie states.

She is currently a member of the Topanga Canyon Gallery and the Los Angeles Art Association Gallery 825 and pursuing local and out-of-town galleries for representation.

Currently her  Spiral Series (process) is occupying her time. She is working to extend it into different mediums and imagery. There are currently over 40 acrylic Spiral Flowers on both paper and canvas,  and since September of 2009 has produced 15 + watercolor and pencil minis, 30+ Spiral Series: heads, faces, lines, shapes, hands, people, veil on canvas and this will continue to grow and reach into greater depth over the next few years.

Karrie says, “I have big plans for the Spiral Series as a continuing series, the one for the rest of my life in one shape or form.  I’m very connected to the energy spirals that occur in and around us all the time and the more I paint the greater the connection builds within me. The more I paint “it” the more this concept / connection will spread into the ethers and into the lives of whoever views, buys and enjoys my art…therefore changing the chemistry dynamic of us all.  If you don’t make the statement known, it will be lost forever. Well, that’s not going to happen here.”

Her work is intended to challenge conventional perceptions, to share insights, to motivate, to encourage, to arouse the soul’s emotions through positive moving images whether they are 2 or 3D. We all “see” things differently and our emotions are aroused by the variety of colors, shapes, sounds and textures around us every day. Please read her Artist Statement Poem

Karrie “views life through different lens’, filtering illusions to unveil reality as she ‘feels’ it… since our world is made up of energy her art reflects this energy. She is an artist that grew up with the 60’s as her teen years…some hippy/beatnik tendencies show up in much of the three dimensional sculpture work she does… which is now labeled “ethnic” and very much a part of Los Angeles’ herritage.

Karrie’s art has been displayed in gallery shows at The Brand Library, Glendale, BGH Gallery, Bergamot Station, The Brewery LA, Topanga Canyon Gallery, and others and a nine foot round, painting of the Sun, floor installation that welcomes art lovers and patrons to the SMGallery, Los Angeles. Her art can be seen in fine and decorative art installations displayed across the world including two hotels in Japan and retail outlets Macy’s, FAO Schwartz, MayCo., Dillards, Sax Fifth Ave, Gladmans, Coach, JCPenney’s, Khol’s, FredMyers, AGI, Hirshbedner, etc. as well as displayed in high end interior design showrooms like Baker Design at the PDC, throughout the U.S. Karrie’s fine art has also been seen on TV and cable shows CSI Miami, The Standoff, Entourage, Medium; Movies: Shadowboxer, Burn After Reading.

In addition, she uses her fine art and design to assist causes and organizations; The United Way, and in support of HIV/ AIDS, AIDS research, breast cancer and through art auction donations to schools and non-profits in the Los Angeles area for the past 25 years.

“My work is as diverse and intense as my emotions.” states Karrie.

The following poem presents how art comes alive for me.

—–

Giclees can be ordered from any of my work shown on the site, please ask me about it.

———————

Copyright: All my work is filed with the US Copyright office and is copyright ©Karrie Ross and all rights of reproduction and display are reserved by the artist. If you wish to use the art in any way, a signed written approval is necessary from the artist… Karrie Ross or her estate and proper credit is to be given. Please contact me if you have any questions.

———————-

Biography

Karrie Ross’s contemporary abstracts are inspired by the rich legacy of her Southern California history of the hippie, yuppie and artist experiences and their contradictory relationship to internal and external energy forms. Ross grew up in Los Angeles learning art-on-the-cuff as she lived her life starting after high school in 1967. This life for the next 10 years took her to Tacoma, Washington when her first husband returned from Vietnam and then to Vail, Colorado in the mid-1970s to explore stained glass in the Rocky’s. Her ever present pen and ink drawings always showing her the way to another dimension, to her it was self discovery. And this discovery took her past the impression of collectors not “getting” her art to exploring avenues that would enhance her continuous need to draw, to move, to create energy art that transfers to the viewer… and she succeed 10 years later when she started painting with watercolors, finding in the swoosh of the brush and blending of the paint the push she was looking for to move her drawing into the force it is today with her Spiral Series 2007 to present.

The process of energy creation has been the life force of Ross’ creative explorations. She strives for a delicate balance between figurative and abstract qualities in her work, always pushing the boundaries of form and composition. Ross begins each painting by applying layers across the surface of the canvas, forming the texture base that brings a depth of life to her art. With the Spiral Series most paintings are pre-determined from a sketch beginning… and filled in along the way as they take life from her energy creating them and they begin to speak to each other, communicating a desire for connection and balance that only they can reach. A joining of their energy forces… their one. This often results in a gradual transformation of the initial sketch as she spontaneously interacts with an endless “watching” activity with the image.
Ross is noted for her transcendent use of form and line harmonies. Her expressionistic abstracts have the power to reach across the barrier of space, evoking emotion and triggering the imagination of the viewer. One can feel the presence of the once unseen forces of the universe looming within the physical boundaries of her paintings. Ross’s images are overflowing with fields of spirals and punctuated by bold familiar and unknown shapes.  She captivates us with her unique vision of the vastness and radiance of her perceived internal and external energy creating worlds. Ross has been honored with several awards, solo and group exhibitions. Her works are in distinctive corporate and private collections across the world. Karrie Ross is one of today’s most exciting contemporary artists, sure to continue to catch the eye of collectors worldwide.