Over the last several years, my work has used nature (plants, trees, and their fruits) as the subject matter to explore the workings of the natural world and to function metaphorically for social situations and human relationships. In the series “B.C. Natives and Immigrants”, the plants and trees many times took the place of people, or represented their desires and expressions of identity.

This series was followed by “West meets East”, which used the Bonsai ideal to contrast Western and Eastern ideas and aesthetics, and by “Family Trees” which dealt with personal history and social structures. Recently, I have been specifically concerned with the pressures of adaptation, and the subsequent modifications and metamorphoses that take place. Constantly faced with stimuli, whether we acknowledge or deny it, we, and nature, are under constant pressure to react, reflect and adapt. These are pressures which require change. Whether physical or mental, they modify and transform reality. They change the structure of self and social identification. And they stimulate activity, which in itself, apart from judgments of good or bad, remains a primary indicator of life.

The process requires the visualization or the creation of structures and schemes that express and facilitate the changes. Visualization is dependent upon how we mold the world (natural and artificial) according to our needs, and how, ultimately, we are constrained to develop the structures to express ourselves from those existing.

This complex relationship creates new systems and forms, involving invention and metamorphosis, both personal and social. As with nature, the effectiveness of the change is unknown, until tried against the environment.

My paintings mix, manipulate and distort the natural characteristics of the plants, their growth pattern, their color and their form, with their symbology and mythology to produce hybrids which, in all their naturalness, are really constructions. Painting is a process of abstraction and visualization, even if the subject is naturalistic. My paintings should not be looked at as merely imitating nature. The works represent and function on many different levels, similar to the dynamics between acts and meanings, forms and significance, in any relationship. As occurs in our everyday experiences, these constructions are not so obvious at first, but reveal themselves slowly as they pass through our various filters of reality.

Karen Yurkovich now lives between Perugia, Italy and Vancouver, Canada. She has recently completed two solo shows in Vancouver and in Edmonton, and is represented in the first Biennial in Merano, Italy, “DNArt”. She continues to teach, with a special interest in traditional techniques and non-toxic methods in oil painting and anatomical drawing.