Karen Dana

Karen Dana

My work depicts the multiple roles that women hands are supposed to inhabit. When I think of the women of my life, I want to visit that experience by approaching painting in various ways as an interpretation of their reality through their working hands. So, when I think of my grandmother knitting I will apply paint in a way yarn interlaces itself, positioning my hands almost like when holding needles. Or when thinking of my aunt on our closest years together I remember her baking so I will treat painting as dough.

Using painting as a way to understand feminism better and the way my own personal history has develop over the years. The gratification of seeing my own experience mirrored trough the research. Each attempt gives me something specific and tangible.

Painting deepened my knowledge of a legacy that intersected with my aim to understand social identities as a wife, as a mother, as a daughter, as a sister, as an artist, as a friend, as a lover, as women.

When I had moved, and moved again I have to leave things unfinished, try to find comfort in the little things I own. Having a family gives me a sense of belonging. I am rooted to these people. I am their mother, their wife and companion, their lover, they need me. Then I dream about moving away yet to another place, an unknown one, far from here… they move with me, if they stay, am I still myself? The roles I play are not me but sometimes they become my identity.