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Award winning painter Karen Foster-Wells began painting outdoors on the California Coast 50 years ago. As a professional artist, her career has spanned 38 years, balancing illustration to support her family with plein air painting to restore her soul, and for the last 15 years, to help preserve the landscape she holds so dear. Born in Pasadena, California in 1942, she was the youngest artist ever to be juries into the Laguna Art Festival in 1966, and had her first major solo exhibition at the Museum of Natural History in Santa Barbara in 1979. Since then she has participated in hundreds of group shows for conservation, and illustrated for such diverse clients as General Motors, Pudenz-Schulte Medical Research, realtors in Lake Arrowhead and Santa Barbara, the SB Botanic Gardens and fine art drawings for the book Santa Barbara RANCHOS, published by The Easton Gallery. |
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Her education includes an AA degree from Orange Coast College, 2 years Fine Art at the University of California at Irvine, 3 years at Laguna Beach School of Art and Design, a year at Advertising Art School, Portland, Oregon, and Extension classes from San Bernardino College, UCLA and UCSB.
Her most recent award was the grand prize and best of show, the $1000 Martin and Weyrich Winery Award in October 2000 at the 7th annual juried exhibition The Color of Autumn, sponsored by the Paso Robles Art association. Also that year brought a first place in Professional Oil and Acrylic and an artist achievement award at the California Mid-State Fair. In previous years she has won first place in that category two other times in addition to numerous awards including a Judges Award. In 1993 she received a bronze medal in the Art of California Discovery Awards.
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She has appeared in Sunset Magazine (Nov 1994), American Artist Magazine (Oct 1988 and May 1998), in television videos for the Nipomo Dunes Mobile Coastal Preserve (1989) and California Heartland for MALT (1998)
She is currently represented by the Johnson Gallery in San Luis Obispo (805-541-4141), reflecting her love of horses, ranching and the central coast landscape. She is a member of the California Art Club, and three local art associations.
Karen and her husband Rory Wells live on thirty acres of wilderness in the coastal hills between Cambria and Paso Robles. They dedicate their lives to art, enjoying the wildlife and each other.
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Web Site:
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Booker's Farm acrylic on paper 22x30
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Arroyo Hondo oil/acrylic on canvas 20 x 30
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Summer River oil/acrylic on canvas 24 x 30
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•RETURN TO MAIN PAGE |
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| •RETURN TO ARTIST THUMBNAILS |
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Mountain Air watercolor 9 x 12
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