{"id":13488,"date":"2026-02-13T23:37:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-14T06:37:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-artist-karen-kristin-donates-her-largest-canvas-painting-to-city\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T21:37:41","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T03:37:41","slug":"cortez-artist-karen-kristin-donates-her-largest-canvas-painting-to-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-artist-karen-kristin-donates-her-largest-canvas-painting-to-city\/","title":{"rendered":"Cortez artist Karen Kristin donates her largest canvas painting to city"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Karen
Karen Kristin stands inside her home studio at Indian Camp Ranch in Cortez. The local artist is surrounded by decades of work, including watercolors and sky murals created on commission for shopping centers, casinos, restaurants, spas and medical clinics. (Anna Watson\/The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

On a casino floor, where voices traveled by radio, Karen Kristin held a laser lighter in one hand and a microphone in the other.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would point at the same time I was talking and direct them to get it just right,\u201d Kristin said, describing the setup for an art installation painted at a Las Vegas casino.<\/p>\n

The initial job involved creating a sunset on a 12,000\u2011square\u2011foot ceiling.<\/p>\n

The team was hired back and the project eventually expanded into a sweeping work that carried Kristin\u2019s painted sky through the casino\u2019s hallways, theaters and restaurants, totaling some 200,000 square feet.<\/p>\n

Kristin is an artist who has lived locally for 25 years. Her home and studio are surrounded by hundreds of her pieces, from watercolors and a series built around wolves, coyotes and mountain lion motifs to early California seascapes and portraits, as well as works from a long career painting sky on commission.<\/p>\n

This year, Kristin donated her first work to the city of Cortez. \u201cThe Red Sunset,\u201d her largest canvas work to date, now hangs in the municipal courtroom. The piece was painted in Albuquerque in 1992, commissioned for a photographer who wanted a backdrop for a commercial.<\/p>\n

\"The
The 7\u2011by\u201111\u2011foot canvas is the largest painting Karen Kristin has completed and the first she has donated. It now hangs in the City of Cortez municipal courtroom. (Anna Watson\/The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Painted
Painted by Karen Kristin in 1992.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

For casino projects, she served on the ground as art director while painters in the lift cages moved across the ceiling. \u201cThere were four of us. Three painters. Me, my friend, and her husband were the three painters,\u201d Kristin said. \u201cI was mostly the director from the floor and then I was a finisher too.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was grueling work, taking more than 10 hours a day, work that\u2019s left a mark on her body. \u201cSo, this is my posture,\u201d she said Thursday, smiling and giving a subtle shrug at her Cortez home on Indian Camp Ranch.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I see a chiropractor every two weeks regularly and so far I\u2019m doing fine,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Kristin said the choice to donate came from a moment of change that\u2019s partly practical and partly existential, the kind she said she\u2019s arrived at since her business Sky Art started to slow.<\/p>\n

\u201cI sold the studio in September, and it was really a business decision,\u201d she said after decades of owning the studio and gallery at 125 N. Sligo St. \u201cI had a hundred paintings hanging \u2026 They\u2019re all here now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sky Art took her around the world and also to Vegas, where she painted in various shops and casinos, including at the Venetian Macao Resort and Hotel, Sunset Station Hotel and Casino and the iconic blue sky at Forum Shops at Caesars Palace.<\/p>\n

Asked whether she liked the combination of business and art, she didn\u2019t hesitate.<\/p>\n

\u201cI did,\u201d Kristin said. \u201cI loved it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Karen
Karen Kristin and her team worked from lifts 40 to 70 feet in the air while painting large sky ceilings. \u201cIt was really quite an operation \u2026 This was the first big one, and I made a big deal out of it,\u201d she said of the lift platforms. (Anna Watson\/The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Karen
Karen Kristin stands beside one of her Monument Valley\u2011inspired works at her home in Cortez. \u201cI\u2019ve always liked symbolism,\u201d she said, recalling waking up to the buttes while traveling through the Southwest in 1976. (Anna Watson\/The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Kristin said she is considering donating more works, first to her relatives and daughters. The city honored the donation in a special message at the City Council meeting Monday, where members thanked her for the 7\u2011by\u201111\u2011foot painting.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just getting started donating \u2026 I will never retire. It\u2019s not my way,\u201d Kristin said. \u201cBut we are needing, we are old now, and we are needing to simplify while we can.\u201d<\/p>\n

Symbolism runs through Kristin\u2019s paintings<\/div>\n

Her early memories are of reaching her toddler fingers out of the crib bars to draw on the wall, a habit her mother, who was also an artist, never scolded.<\/p>\n

She bought the 35\u2011acre ranch property in 1998, but first traveled and lived many places.<\/p>\n

Kristin has always supported herself through art, making her living selling paintings or trying out different business ideas. She went to India in 2000 to create murals for Swami Sai Baba, a famous religious teacher now deceased, painting large elemental panels with water, fire and wind. She did the portrait of Sai Baba. In her Denver studio, she painted the panels for a museum, traveled on\u2011site in India and finished the touch\u2011ups there.<\/p>\n

\"A
A painted sky ceiling inside Karen Kristin\u2019s home. After decades creating large\u2011scale sky ceilings in casinos and commercial spaces, she brought the same style into her own living space. (Anna Watson\/The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

In her scrapbook, there\u2019s a photo of young Kristin smiling before the Taj Mahal.<\/p>\n

She worked for a decade as an illustrator for a Chinese master, painted furniture with a friend in New Mexico, traded artwork, built a studio and remodeled spaces.<\/p>\n

Kristin and her team were finishing a major sky\u2011ceiling project for a Korean Japanese billionaire at his estate when the COVID\u201119 pandemic hit. The whole dilemma of the pandemic contributed to a slowdown in large\u2011scale commissions.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always liked symbolism,\u201d she said, pointing out a series of work where animals move from realism into older beings.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea is the animal starts out realistically and then gradually becomes the totem,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd same thing, the realistic animal gradually becomes the totem as the people here begin to recognize the qualities they have.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even one of her darker paintings carries symbols: dark brown shadows, black and violet colors represent a dark energy, and the tortured face of a wolf shows flickers of the soul taking flight. The painting is of Taos Mountain, where in Taos, New Mexico, she lived for years. Kristin describes sounds from the canyon \u201clike the groans of the earth itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, this painting is called \u2018Splitting Up.\u2019 Because it\u2019s a crack, it\u2019s not an erosion caused by a river,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was made from a splitting in the earth. The wolf part is the dark energy and these canyon walls \u2026 I do have this painting somewhere \u2026 it is a dark one.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A
A series by Karen Kristin depicting animals moving from realism into totemic figures set against the Four Corners backdrops. (Anna Watson\/The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

awatson@the-journal.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kristin\u2019s \u2018The Red Sunset,\u2019 painted in 1992, now hangs in the municipal courtroom<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13489,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,29,994],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-13488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter","tag-trueanthem"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13488"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13488\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19003,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13488\/revisions\/19003"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13488"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=13488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}