Born and raised in Wichita, Kansas, in an artistic family, Karin K. Swanson, has been surrounded by art her whole life. Her father, Charles H. Sanderson, was a renowned artist throughout the Midwest. Her mother, Ruth E. Sanderson, was his business manager. Karin spent many hours watching her father paint in his studio at their home in Wichita, Kansas. She helped with many aspects of preparing paintings for shows, devoted endless hours helping prepare for art fairs and gallery shows that her father had throughout the United States and experiencing the many different art communities that her parents were involved in. She has been drawing, painting and experimenting in different artistic areas since she was a small child. Even selling small drawings she created from scraps of her father’s matt board at art fairs when she was eight and nine years old.

Though she did not start painting seriously until 1991, the seed was planted long before that and was just waiting to grow. It started when she returned to college at Wichita State University studying Art History. Sitting in the auditoriums listening to lectures and studying art history brought the artistic drive to the surface. Painting only for her own enjoyment, showing very few pieces to anyone (including her father) and experimenting with different mediums she came across the one that has brought her art to life. She is inspired by the likes of Williem de Kooning, the Impressionists, the Abstract Expressionists and with the use of color in Peter Max’s work. After showing her work to her father and receiving her first critique in 1992 from him, she realized that all those years of watching and learning had paid off. Using acrylic paint on canvas, she began to explore the medium, develop her talent and expression of color.

At this time painting is only a part of her life, but a constant expression of her love of color. Moving to Las Vegas in January of 2001, the exploration of her work has found new frontiers. Expressing the color of the desert sky and the fire of the mountains, along with her travels throughout the United States, has given her work the expression and freedom of using color to explore her own abstract expressionism.

Karin Swanson