Sneak Peek Inside A Vibrant Ditmas Park Artist’s Home Studio

“I had an art teacher who said ‘You stop when beauty comes’,” said Karen Friedland, a Ditmas Park painter and teacher as I toured her gallery living room, as she revealed her artist’s secrets and her  “creativity revolution.” Friedland is prepping for an open studio this weekend, showcasing her array of vibrant paintings and teaching tools.

“I’m always thinking about the contrast of one color and shape to another,” she said of her recent abstract acrylics informed by her design studies at Pratt. “Design and painting are all about color,” she said. Karen’s work is vibrant and driven by pattern, texture, contrasts, and intuition.

Friedland has been an artist for more than 20 years, but stumbled upon a painting career accidentally, guided by an impulse to create art as her body was creating life. While pregnant with her first child, she said, “I felt like I needed to create and didn’t know what to do — aside from making a person, which my body was just doing on its own.”

“I knew I was a painter when I developed a recognizable style and achieved consistency within different formats,” said Friedland, who picked up her first paintbrush mid-life on a suggestion from her color teacher at Pratt design school.

Over the years her style has evolved from pattern-drive figurative pieces, which are representational more than realistic, to abstract pieces wild with movement and color — and some combination of the two.

We spoke in-depth about ‘Elephant Vision’, an unstretched 48” x 60” acrylic on canvas hanging in her living room gallery. This piece, like many of her paintings, began as a pure abstraction, gradually taking figurative shape after layers upon layers of colors, drips, and shapes. The elephant appears to be emerging from the layers, giving the piece a sense of history, personality, and visual depth. “Even though you don’t see [the underlayers], you get glimpses and that impacts the top layers,” she said.

Elephants are also a prominent theme in Friedland’s work, inspired by her time spent in Southern Africa.

Friedland teaches all-level classes in the basement of her Marlborough Road home, where she focuses on unlocking creativity — including a post-election class where students did an exercise designed to turn negative emotions into art.

She’s begun using her Art Spark card deck ($20), her latest project in what she calls a “creativity revolution.” Each card has a project with parameters, reflection question, and visualization guide — illustrated by Karen’s paintings. Artists, students, and anyone using the cards can share their work on the Art Spark Facebook group, where Friedland says she’s constantly surprised by the direction people take.

Friedland has painted herself into the fabric of Ditmas Park, living on Marlborough Road for 28 years and founding groups like the Flatbush Artists Studio Tour, various mother’s groups, and a women’s potluck circle. She also teaches art classes from her studio basement and after school programs through the Brooklyn Arts Council. “I love the people in this neighborhood,” she said.

You can speak with Friedland more about the history and emotion behind each painting this weekend at her holiday sale, Saturday, December 10 and Sunday, December 11 from 12pm to 5pm, at 190 Marlborough Road. You can see more of her work online here, and buy the Art Spark card deck here. You can also learn how to unlock your inner painter at a class here.