Meet Karen
Growing up I received a strong foundation in the arts at The Ashtabula Arts Center, in Ashtabula, Ohio. I studied with George Olson during my college years at The College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio, but I didn’t continue with my painting. Four years ago I picked up my brushes again. In 2003 I was diagnosed with GIST (Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumor Cancer) which I am still being treated for. In 2006 I lost a dear cousin to cancer. When I was at his hospital bedside, I couldn’t concentrate enough to read, so I picked up some paintbrushes and started to paint. It was a wonderful release for my emotions. After such a long time away from painting, it was as if I had opened a vein and paint was running out instead of blood. I think some of my cousin’s zest for life got mixed into the paints and was somehow mysteriously transferred to my brush. I keep a picture of him in my studio – he looks over my shoulder and says either “not bad” or “fish bait!” He was a first-rate fisherman off the Kona Coast of Hawaii. He “hooked me” into painting.
Recently I have studied watercolor with Judi Whitton and oil painting with Guildo Frick. I am a member of the Missouri Watercolor Society and the Springfield Regional Arts Council. You can find me on the SRAC’s Artist Registry.
Together with my husband, J. Michael Schneider, M.D., we have three children, Charles Schneider, Andrew Schneider, and Mrs. Jenny S. Coluccio.
Recently I have studied watercolor with Judi Whitton and oil painting with Guildo Frick. I am a member of the Missouri Watercolor Society and the Springfield Regional Arts Council. You can find me on the SRAC’s Artist Registry.
Together with my husband, J. Michael Schneider, M.D. we have three children, Charles Schneider, Andrew Schneider, and Mrs. Jenny S. Coluccio.
Her Artistic Process
I like to paint loose and free. Movement and dynamics are the most important aspects of a painting to me. A good painting will catch the viewer off balance and set them to imagining – what is happening here? Paint on paper becomes more than the sum of their parts when breath and story and spirit come together in strong, fluid brush strokes of playful discovery, supported by attention to composition, light, and color. Watercolor has a mind of its own, it’s not at all predictable. Sometimes happy accidents occur, other times, no matter how hard I try, I can’t make a painting work, it is really quite mysterious. When I am able to remove myself from the conscious process of painting and allow Art to happen on its own through me, then I am on to something, that’s when painting becomes a delicious, magical, mysterious act of faith.
I am also a freelance writer. My poems have appeared in The First Anthology of Missouri Women Writers, published by Sheba Review, Helicon Nine, The Journal of Women’s Arts and Letters, Type Literary Magazine, a publication of Missouri State University, The Griffin, Lindenwood College, and Odessa Poetry Review. O’Zarks! Press published my two plays, Letters From Lydia, A Voice Lost In Time, and The Gift, A Drama Of The Holocaust Then And Now. I have taught creative writing at Drury University’s Summerscape Program for Gifted Students and I have delivered many lectures and readings. I have also written a monthly book review column for the Greene County Medical Society Journal.
My children’s book Hay Day joins these two joys of mine, writing and painting. I hope to do more of this kind of work in the future.
