Karen Schifman
I am a mixed-media artist. I arrange vintage objects and images culled from various sources to produce compositions that address ideas about my personal history, female identity, and world issues. My aesthetic vocabulary is rich and varied, as I employ fragments of old photographs, details from favored paintings, and a range of domestic detritus discovered in antique stores, estate sales and flea markets. All of these are combined to create complex poetic compositions that invite viewer engagement. I deploy collage and assemblage to tell stories. My work is informed by art history, visual culture and often depends on the materials at hand.
“The Fire”
Our home in Pacific Palisades was spared. However, smoke damage to our belongings and particularly to my art studio was intense. The overall theme for me for 2025 is loss. With my material world in peril, I felt a shift in my identity, intense melancholia, along with survivor’s guilt. Here I present one artwork that suffered smoke damage, one artwork that I created after the fire and my reaction to it, and one work of art that I created in honor of my mother who passed away earlier this year.
“The Fire”
Our home in Pacific Palisades was spared. However, smoke damage to our belongings and particularly to my art studio was intense. The overall theme for me for 2025 is loss. With my material world in peril, I felt a shift in my identity, intense melancholia, along with survivor’s guilt. Here I present one artwork that suffered smoke damage, one artwork that I created after the fire and my reaction to it, and one work of art that I created in honor of my mother who passed away earlier this year.