<\/p>\n
Land meets sky in the current exhibit at Olio Food Wine Art.<\/p>\n
The Mancos restaurant and art gallery is featuring paintings by two local artists: Karen Kristin and Susan Reed. Reed specializes in landscapes and textures, while Kristin is known as the \u201cSky Lady.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe paintings that she\u2019s putting in there this time will be of her skies,\u201d Reed said of her colleague. \u201cSo they\u2019re mostly \u2013 not abstract, kind of conceptual. But all sky. So they look really nice with my work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reed\u2019s showcased paintings center around farming scenes.<\/p>\n
\u201cLots of sheep,\u201d she said. \u201cI love to do sheep. Some people, old trucks.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reed is originally from Oklahoma City, and has been painting since about the age of 15, she said. She moved around the country, shifting focus and style, and came to this corner of the world 17 years ago.<\/p>\n
Fashion and female characters have always held a sort of fascination for her, and she likes to incorporate a variety of fabrics and materials into these works.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s attracted to the feel of the material and its eye-catching qualities, particularly as a former interior designer. \u201cAnd just all of the fabric texture and the feeling of it, and the sensuality of using it on the canvas,\u201d Reed said.<\/p>\n
Her love of textures has led her to experiment with some unique canvases, from vintage calendars to maps to Japanese paper.<\/p>\n
\u201cI call it painting with paper, because I like to use the Japanese paper to give my things some depth and some shadow,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd it all started because I just kept finding my acrylics to have less and less pigment in them. And so when I couldn\u2019t get anything as striking as I wanted it to be, I thought, \u2018I\u2019ll just stick this rice paper type thing that\u2019s dyed naturally into the acrylic and see what happens.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
And now that she\u2019s in Southwest Colorado, landscapes in all their glory are a must.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just so beautiful out here, it\u2019s really hard not to continue to paint the landscape,\u201d Reed said.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s made a home about nine miles north of Cortez, and showed her work last year at Olio too.<\/p>\n
This year, her portion of the show will focus on some of the same themes from last year, such as farm animals and sheep, using pencil and acrylics and some of her handmade paper.<\/p>\n
Her exhibit partner Karen Kristin grew up in Los Angeles, which is where her sky art origins are rooted.<\/p>\n
Initially, Kristin painted commercial backdrops and sets for television and soon developed a reputation as a sky artist. After 10 years there, she moved to New Mexico in 1988, since she had always wanted to live in the Southwest.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd here the skies are so beautiful,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Since then, she moved her office to Denver before settling into Cortez full-time in 2005. Her studio presently resides along Sligo Street, and her company is called Sky Art Karen Kristin Inc.<\/p>\n
She primarily uses acrylic. \u201cThe sky paintings that we make on-site are water-based acrylic, and we spray,\u201d she said. \u201cSo nothing is done with brushes, it\u2019s all with air equipment, and air brushes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her celestial niche has carried her around the world, from Caesar\u2019s Forum in Las Vegas to the Chaitanya Jyoti Museum in India.<\/p>\n
The largest project her company undertook was a 252,000 square foot ceiling at the Venetian Macao Resort Hotel in Asia.<\/p>\n
Logistically, her profession takes her to great heights \u2013 she regularly hops onto 80-foot boom lifts to turn ceilings into blazes of color and swirls of blue.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think this kind of work has kept me young,\u201d Kristin said.<\/p>\n
She also has spent time researching and painting animals of this area, but the artwork she\u2019s bringing to the Olio show all feature skies in some way.<\/p>\n
The Olio show kicked off with a reception Aug. 10 and will run through Oct. 5.<\/p>\n