Karen Fulk

Summary of her biography:

My love affair with drawing began at a very early age, in the late 40’s, thanks to my Mom and Dad who illustrated the ABC’s for me and put it in my very own book. I grew up with Disney, of course, and later with Norman Rockwell’s covers on Post magazine, but it was only by Providence (& my Spanish teacher’s mercy) that I was admitted into the University of California at Davis, where I had the great privilege of learning how to draw & paint from Wayne Thiebaud, who along with my ceramics teacher, Robert Arneson, I took classes from all four years during 1961-1965. Both of their art has influenced my own in very deep ways, and in 1970 a portrait I did of Wayne Thiebaud won a Purchase Award from the Sacramento Regional Arts Council at the Festival of the Arts, and hung in Sacramento City Hall for a year…

Actually, my fine art endeavors started off rather well after graduation from U.C. Davis with shows at various galleries and awards for my work…The summer after graduation, I drove a friend to Pasadena and naively decided to go to Disney Studios looking for a job while I was in the area. As Providence would have it, Disney Studios didn’t need me, but they just happened to have an opening in Tomorrowland drawing "Pastel Profiles"! That was the beginning of a now 41 year career drawing caricatures for fun and profit…but after marriage and a move to Sacramento, then kids and church, I put my art on the back burner.

Finally, in 1986, I was bursting at the seams to get back to serious painting, and found a mentor in William Boddy, who was starting the Sacramento Regional Illustrator’s Guild at the same time. I was asked to be a Charter Member, and learned how to be professional through the Guild’s guidance.

I later garnered representation at the coveted Michael Himovitz Gallery, where I just walked in off the street to show him my portfolio. I started my series of "Nostalgia" paintings with Michael’s direction…The "Nostalgia: It’s worth going back for" series lasted the whole decade of the 90’s and brought me some cool press, but my favorite coup was having my name in lights at the Grand Opening of the renovated Tower Theater Gallery in Roseville in 1997.

1997 was also a memorable year for me at the California State Fair. Not only did my painting "Random Mutations, 25 cents" (unabashedly influenced by Thiebaud’s gumball machine, Robert Arneson’s satirical outlook on the going Gestalt, and the start of more narrative painting) win the "Spirit of California Award", I was also interviewed by Channel 31 for the "Remembering Elvis" Show & had my Elvis painting "Wanted: Dead or Alive" on tv & in the Sacramento Bee’s Encore Magazine.

Today I’m preparing for a solo show in October at The Artisan Gallery on Del Paso Blvd in Sacramento. I will be incorporating mostly figurative painting with figurative, narrative sculptures, commenting on "Life As I See It".

Find her full bio on her website.