Conversations and Dialogue in Art: Karen Campbell
February 2025
From the moment she sketched a tennis shoe in seventh grade and her teacher told her she was a good sketcher, Karen Campbell ventured into the art space and dreamed of becoming a full-time artist. However, her journey led her into art education, where she found fulfillment in teaching high school students for Gwinnett County Public Schools. For years, she balanced guiding students with creating her own work on the side, and in recent years, she has dedicated more and more time to her personal craft, now displaying her work in multiple shows around Georgia each year.
Campbell describes her art as a conversation: a conversation between artistic elements, symbols, and subject matters within her art. These elements create layers of meaning, inviting viewers to explore her pieces beyond the surface and spend time exploring conversations created between the elements of her art.
“I want people to identify with and feel like they’re a part of it ”
Music serves as a primary inspiration for her. "I’d say 75 to 80 percent of my work is inspired by music," she shares. A lyric often sparks the beginning of a piece, acting as a catalyst for conversations within her art. A single phrase can guide her creative process, leading her to explore recurring themes in media, conversations in daily life, or her memories. Her work becomes a dialogue, visually representing the same themes that music, songs touch upon. Her creations are somewhat autobiographical, reflecting her thoughts, memories, and personal experiences and abstracting them through symbolic elements in the mixed-media canvases the viewer can discover and personally connect with.
“It’s an orchestrated conversation. Composition is important in order for the conversation to take place.”
In the process of starting from a white canvas, Campbell shared that she writes down her feelings and ideas, at a very personal level before layering paint over them, letting those buried words shape the final piece: almost as if she under-paints with text. She then seeks out songs and imagery, often working in a cut-and-paste method that allows for flexibility in composition, arranging and rearranging elements until they feel just right, drawing from the way she guides her own students to pay attention to composition and balance.
"I want people to engage with my work, to get lost in it, and to become part of the conversation."
The titles of her works are important cues to jump into her art and discover all of the details. "I want people to look and find things—to notice something new each time they return to a piece," she explains. She recalled her very first solo show, where her professor reaffirmed this noting that her work was strongest when displayed together, and creating visual conversations with each other. Seeing her pieces side by side allows viewers to recognize patterns, recurring imagery, and the evolving visual language of symbols, marks, and textures she has developed over time.
Her upcoming solo show, "The Art of the Mixtape" will be on display from June 10 to July 31 at the Winterville Cultural Center, just outside Athens. "The Art of the Mixtape" could be interpreted as a creative exploration of how art, much like a mixtape, is a curated collection of diverse elements, experiences, and expressions. Just as a mixtape carefully arranges songs to create a mood or tell a story, "The Art of the Mixtape" could symbolize the intentional selection and arrangement of visuals (drawings, colors, textures) that reflect the emotional resonance, rhythm, and narrative found in music. Featuring 10 to 14 works, the exhibition invites viewers to immerse themselves in these visual conversations.
