Karen Seapker graduated with a BA in studio art and art history from Muhlenberg College, Allentown, PA, and an MFA in painting from Hunter College, New York. Her work has been exhibited in spaces including James Cohan Gallery in NYC and Shanghai, The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, PA, Rhona Hoffman Gallery in Chicago, Sargent's Daughters in Los Angeles, The Shepherd in Detroit, Plato Gallery in NYC, Zeitgeist and Red Arrow in Nashville. Seapker’s work was included in Crystal Bridges Museum’s survey of contemporary art, State of the Art 2020, and was acquired as a part of the museum’s permanent collection. Her work is included in various private collections worldwide. She has received numerous recognitions for her work, including the Austin Peay State University Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts Tennessee Artist Fellowship; the ChaNorth residency, Pine Planes, NY; two New American Paintings Southern Competition features; and two nominations for the Joan Mitchell Fellowship. Reviews of her work have been in publications including Burnaway, Hyperallergic, and ArtForum and Wall Street Journal. She lives and works in Nashville, TN and is represented by Red Arrow.
Image Courtesy of Ashley Holstein
The growing season has passed. My garden is softening, folding in on itself, beginning the winter melt back into the earth. Still, the birds sing, more visible now as they dart between bare limbs and seedheads. I have lived alongside this growing ecosystem for several seasons, but the changes still feel like revelations. In her book, The Garden Against Time, Olivia Laing writes “So many of our most ecologically deleterious behaviours are to do with refusing impermanence and decay, insisting on summer all the time... The garden was always engaged in a dance with death.” The cycle is relentless, and as you become accustomed to the brevity of forms, even living amongst Summer blooms can feel like hosting a ghost.
Continually moving through these phases of loss has come to feel like a practice. I’m learning to befriend the ghost. And it’s the ghost alongside me that nudges me when an election is lost, or I feel us turning toward tyranny, as I witness people around me becoming fueled with fear. I imagine the ghost whispering into my ear, “we’ve been here before.”
“This body of work grew out of a time when I felt helpless and powerless. The first paintings made in this series were reflecting on a world that felt kaleidoscopic, groundless, and out of my control. They were lamentations. But as the paintings kept me company, a conversation started, songs and stories snuck in through the backdoor.
I’m not interested in disconnecting from the world and its suffering. I don’t believe that the cyclical lessons of the garden are meant to lull us into resignation. Instead, they remind us of our consistently renewed connection. We are relational beings. We are beheld by this world and the ghosts it carries. In turn, we seek new shady ground for plants after the tree above them falls. We knock back the invasives to make room for biodiversity. When the rights of those we love are being threatened and taken away, we take action. We lament, we reflect, and we find a way forward.”
-Karen Seapker
If you're lost, you can look, and you will find me
Time after time
If you fall, I will catch you, I'll be waiting
Time after time
–Cindy
Lauper
Karen Seapker
She’s So Unusual
2025 Oil on canvas
34 x 28 inches
$4,500
Spinning Flames
2025 Oil on canvas
28 x 24 inches
$4,000
44 x 38 inches
$6,000
Hosting the Ghost 2025 Oil on canvas
70 x 50 inches
$11,500
Caught Up in Circles
$9,500
Playing on Repeat
2025 Oil on canvas
44 x 38 inches
$6,000
2025 Oil on canvas
28 x 24 inches
$4,000
