Janet Karam
My first fascination for creating art came at an early age, and my
passion for it has since then to become a powerful driving force in my
life. I graduated from the Art Institute of Dallas in 1988 and have
mostly developed my skills through daily painting and
mentoring under Donna Finch-Adams who provided me with guidance at a time I was eager to sponge in her wisdom of 30 years as a professional artist and art professor.
After several years of
living in larger cities, I moved to a small historical Texas town where
the old weathered architecture and of my new surroundings inspired the
original paintings in my Funkytown abstract painting series for whcih this website was named. After a year of painting
cityscapes, I began a new series of figurative paintings
in 2008, which so far include musicians, nudes, ballerinas, and jazz saxophone players. This series began in my study phase of more realistic figurative and portrait paintings, although still expressive as I become reacquainted with the human figure, and is beginning to spin off in some exciting directions as I begin to experiment with abstraction, design and composition.
Most of my time is spent daily in front of my easel as I become increasingly curious and experimental developing my style and communicating my vision. As I paint, it is as if I am sculpting with color, with each new layer lending additional dimension and form. My goal is to create movement and energy with my brushwork, and break through static barriers as much as possible.
I am an expressive contemporary painter both with brushwork and color application regardless of the subjects I paint. Due to the representational subjects of my artwork, my contemporary style of paintings fall somewhere between Realism and Abstraction where I experiment playfully in the vast area between.