About the Artist
Karen Lynn Ingalls is a working artist and California credentialed teacher (Art and English) who lives in Napa Valley. Her artwork, including paintings, drawings, collages, and life-sized painted sculptures, has been exhibited, and can be found in collections on, both west and east coasts, and a few places in between, too.
Karen is mostly known for her brilliantly colored landscape paintings. Originally a painter and drawer of people, she began painting endangered landscapes — places threatened by development — as she worked with others, successfully, to save a threatened wetlands area in Monterey County. Enchanted by the land, its colors, and its spirit, she continued painting colorist landscapes of rural California.
Karen’s artwork, and articles about it, have appeared in The Calistoga Tribune, The Weekly Calistogan, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, the Salinas Californian, the Monterey Herald, and the Monterey Coast Weekly, among others. She has also been interviewed about her artwork on radio stations KVYN in Napa, by Kelly Fuller, and KAZU in Pacific Grove, by John McNally, on Art After Lunch.
From 2005 to 2007, Karen also worked on a series of public art projects, in the form of painted sculptures for the Calistoga Art Center's Flying Fish of the Napa River (Cloud Swimmer); and Peanuts on Parade: A Tribute to Charles M. Schulz, organized by the City of Santa Rosa and the Charles M. Schulz Museum (Downtown Charlie Brown; You Ain't Nothin' But a Hound Dog; Woodstock's Summer of Love; Dr. Joe Cool, Heart Throb; and Original Joe).
Karen has taught art classes and workshops in a variety of subjects, including acrylic painting, landscape painting, composition and color harmony, drawing and sketching, block printing, and mixed media painting, to adults and children. Formerly a high school teacher, she has also taught for Napa Valley College Community Education, and currently teaches art classes and workshops for adults and mature teens at the Calistoga Art Center, as well as private, group, and corporate workshops. You can find her workshops at www.NapaValleyArtWorkshops.com.