Karen Carson

By Jody Zellen

Huge gestural paintings of tractors fill the gallery walls with energy and passion in Karen Carson's latest show. The subjects, mundane machinery usually driven by men, are transformed into brilliant meditations on landscape and culture. Although Los Angeles based, Carson spends ample time in Montana and it is there where she not only takes in the vast landscape but also encounters tractors. To Carson's eye, a tractor is not merely a tractor. It's an imposing vehicle, an economic and cultural reality and something that must be looked up to, the more so when it is painted in basic primary colors.

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by Eve Wood

Karen Carson has a tremendous sense of humor, as is evidenced in her most recent exhibition at Rosamund Felsen. Having chosen farming equipment—most prominently, tractors—as her subject matter, Carson revels in the sheer monumentality and vibrant colors of these exquisite forms. Whoever would have thought tractors could be so compelling?

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by David Pagel

By the time Monet got around to painting pictures of haystacks, viewers pretty much knew that his works were not about farming.

All kinds of subjects, including perception, time, workmanship and mortality, as well as paint’s capacity to make and convey meaning, played into the Impressionist’s images of life in the French countryside.

Times have changed — and not for the better.

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