The bright red hull of the lobster boat seems to bob up and down at the dock.
The movement is a trick, manipulation of light and color on canvas. But even knowing that, it’s hard not to hear the lapping waves, smell the salty air and feel the breeze coming off the water.
When Karen Stanley happened upon the scene, she felt the magic behind. That inspired her to want to seize it in a painting that could be enjoyed long after the moment passed.
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“My goal is to capture the spirit, color and light of a given scene or subject matter that drew me to it in the first place,” she said. “Art to me is a way of seeing, recognizing and capturing the beauty of magical moments to be found in both the ordinary and the extraordinary.”
Through her landscapes and still lifes, Stanley has worked to bring the incredible scenery that has touched her life to the masses.
The Indianapolis resident’s work will be on display starting Friday at the Southside Art League. To people who come out to see it, she hopes it makes an impression.
“I hope they find something that they feel is special about the scene, strikes a chord with them that reminds them of places they’ve been or things they’ve seen or done,” she said.
Stanley’s introduction to art came from her father. He was constantly creating, either on his sketch pad or through wood carving. She was fascinated by the idea of using your senses to make something.
Her career was focused on varying position in higher education and marketing research. She earned her bachelor’s degree from MacMurray College before earning master’s degrees in education from Kent State University and marketing/marketing research from the University of Michigan.
But art remained an important part of her life. Stanley took classes, attended workshops to develop her style and read countless books on form.
“I started out in watercolor and loved the transparency of that, what I saw with the colors and freshness of that,” she said. “But I have evolved to oil painting now.”
Just as her initial interest in watercolor was inspired by color, her passion for oil painting stem from the way she could capture the sensory environment of a situation.
One of her favorite activities is plein aire painting — setting up her easel in an outdoor location and painting what she sees in real time.
“It’s all very fresh and vibrant, and challenging. It’s always changing,” she said. “The key is to zero in on what you see that’s special about a scene, and often that’s characterized how the light is striking something. Then you use preliminary sketches to capture the pattern of the light and the dark. Then as things change a little bit, you still know where those areas were that attracted you.”
Though Stanley does do some paintings of animals and still life works, landscapes make up a majority of her work. She has traveled to locales as varied as Maine and the Texas coast all the way to spots around Indiana to find her subjects.
She’s drawn to trees — the towering features of the landscape have character and tend to stand out more, due to the fact that the sun shines on parts of them, but the plants also create shade, she said.
To find the perfect subject for her work, she keeps a sharp eye out for aspects of the world that stand out from the background. Her painting of the lobster boat scene, titled “Lobster Reds,” is an example of that.
“I loved the colors of that, and so it was an exercise in discerning the differences between the colors and where the light hits, and where it was darker,” she said.
The show at the Southside Art League will feature newer work done mostly within the last year. Landscapes will take up a large chunk, though her floral still life paintings and some animals will also be included.
“I tend to be more Impressionistic, rather than precise or photo-realistic. I like the sense of something being painterly or loosely suggestive rather than too rigidly following the lines,” she said.
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Karen Stanley exhibition
What: Landscapes, still lifes and other paintings by Stanley, an Indianapolis artist
When: Friday through June 30
Where: Southside Art League Off-Broadway Gallery, 299 E. Broadway St., Greenwood
Hours: 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday
Reception: People will have the chance to meet Stanley and talk about her art during a reception from 6 to 8 p.m. June 8. There is no cost to attend.
Information: southsideartleague.org; KarenStanley.com
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