"Reliquary Dreamings," paintings by Karen Day now showing at Frank Gallery

Karen Day taught art for 30 years before formally launching her career in painting. Now working within a community of artists, she reaches inward and draws inspiration from relics and old writing. Rendering her revelations on warm surfaces, she creates majestic works that capture dreamlike motion.

Her paintings are rich in color and symbolism, evoking moods and memories that stir at the edge of awareness. Guided by intuition, she returns "to the canvas over time, reworking shapes and color relationships until a kind of harmony or tension reveals itself," typically working on a painting over two weeks.

Her techniques include masking and scraping areas to create visual depth. "Some areas build up over time, while others are left raw, preserving the contrast between presence and absence, form and formlessness."

"I think of my paintings as artifacts of an interior world, shaped by my dreamings of time and memory. The idea of the reliquary - a vessel of what’s sacred and enduring - has stayed with me. Instead of something static or sealed, I imagine reliquaries in motion: shifting forms dissolving, evolving and reforming."

"My interest is in what is revealed, what remains hidden, and how meaning can live in the spaces between. My paintings hold remnants of past marks, decisions, and even mistakes. I think of them as diagrams of memory and feeling - It’s less about representation than about holding space for what resists being named."

You will appreciate seeing these works in person! Karen Day's show is at Frank Gallery, 370 E Main Street, Suite 130 through October 3.