AWA Associate Member Karen Yee has always been “art-minded”. Her mother painted in oils as a hobby and Karen did a lot of drawing in school and as an adult, but she always felt that in order to pursue art she would need to be really serious about it.

AWA Associate Member Karen Yee has always been “art-minded”. Her mother painted in oils as a hobby and Karen did a lot of drawing in school and as an adult, but she always felt that in order to pursue art she would need to be really serious about it.

In 2003, when she was diagnosed with an aggressive breast cancer, this seriousness came into her life.

“I just decided,” Karen says, “it was now or never.”

A friend of Karen’s taught workshops in oil painting and she began to take classes. She found that she was too impatient for oil painting. Her work is done in many layers and she simply couldn’t wait for the oil paint to dry. She has been much happier with her work now that she has moved on to acrylics. Karen says almost everything she has learned in painting has been from friends and other artists she admires.

“I fought against my instincts at first, I thought I had to do a looser, more impressionistic style but I realized that this style wasn’t mine,” Karen says. “I really started improving when I allowed myself to be myself and paint in my tighter, more realistic style.”

Karen’s choice to paint herself during her treatment came about organically. She says it was just something she felt she had to do.

“There were times in treatment that I just knew ‘I have to paint this,’ there are a myriad of feelings and emotions that you go through and you can’t catalog them all,” Karen says. “This is one way to express them and work through them.”

Karen’s self-portraits portraying her cancer treatments are powerful expressions of the struggles she has faced during the last 13 years, but she also paints many other subjects, in her signature realistic style. She is fascinated with masks and costumes, and has done series of painting on both. She is currently working on her first tiger painting, an animal she has always had an affinity for, which could turn into a series.

Karen’s first show with AWA was our 2015 Spring Online Juried Show and she was excited to have been accepted in last year’s National Juried Exhibition as well.

“I was so impressed to come out to Scottsdale and meet so many fellow artists, I loved seeing the group setting goals at the Annual Member Meeting,” Karen says. “In an ideal world there wouldn’t be a need for an organization to promote women artists – but I’m so glad that that there is a group like AWA for us.”