Karen Kunc

Karen Kunc was born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1952. She is a printmaker
and Professor of Art at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her artwork is
featured in collections and museums across the United States, Europe
and Japan.
Her personal style as an artist is directly related to the medium she chooses
— which is color woodcuts. She began to use woodcut, a relief printmaking
technique, after trying other methods like serigraphy or intaglio.
Her images have been influenced by the work of the German Expressionists
and also by the tradition of Japanese woodblock prints. According to the
artist, her imagery is “nature-based abstraction” that also reflects her own unique physical involvement
with the medium — how she makes her marks on the wood surface, how she decides on the
interacting shapes. Subject matter for her work is drawn from natural sources such as plants, cloud
forms in the sky, or landscapes.
Her method of working on her art is both spontaneous and planned. She works on sketches to allow
the creative process to flow, but then she organizes each step she will take to construct her finished
design. As her images take shape, she is open to new possibilities of color, space, or texture. She usually
works on one work of art at a time, and creates about 14 prints for each edition.