American Bison ~ Cigar Box Painting #5, Karine Swenson

As an artist, Karine Swenson feels a kinship with artists who came before her. As a wildlife painter, the kinship Karine feels stretches back to when people were painting on the walls of caves, to a time when wildlife was abundant in ways unimaginable today, and when the relationship of humans to animals was entirely different. Karine suspects that most people have limited experience with wild creatures, having only seen them in zoos. “This is not the same,” she says, “as being out on foot somewhere, and being surprised by a coyote or a bighorn ram just above you on a boulder." For Karina, this is a moment of trepidation that may be equally real for the animal. Yet for the woman, there is also a sense of awe, and Karine seeks to put the emotion of that fleeting encounter into each animal she paints.

During this era of pandemic, when the human species itself is under existential threat, there is growing awareness that we are expendable. In a despairing and cynical world, it seems we are past the point of no return, that the destructive domino effect on our eco-systems we have put into place cannot be reversed. Inside the nightmare of our own making, Karine’s art offers visions of hope, recovery, and rebirth. Her animals are far more than creatures of flesh and blood painted onto canvas, they are messengers announcing that a new Eden is possible. In a world that has systematically disregarded, devalued, and exploited wild beasts, like magical Welsh goats descended from Great Orme headland to nibble on Llandudno hedgerows, Karine’s animals allow us to dream. If we want it, they suggest, we can be more than gratuitous producers and consumers, not separate from the grand, overarching system of the cosmos, but a part of it. On a planet where wildlife has been increasingly forced into smaller-and-smaller territories, where a virus previously benign to humans can jump from a pangolin to a person, Karine Swenson’s paintings hold the promise of ancient wisdom and of what is possible if we dare to change.

Cigar Box Painting #5 Bison, Karine Swenson, oil on cigar box, 11 x 7 x 3” (SOLD). To see more of Karine Swenson’s art, both animal and beyond, visit HERE

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