Nancy Karper, Oil Painter
14 Dec 2010: My mother has been an oil painter for 40+ years, and to me her work just gets more and more beautiful. She works almost exclusively with the palette knife now, concentrating on landscapes around Long Lake in Wisconsin, where her home is set. I grew up with the smell of turpentine & cigarettes, the glare of spotlights and the laughter of students and seeping under the door between her studio and our living room in Palos Heights while I watched The White Shadow on tv. It seemed normal to have a mother that painted portraits of her neighbors, siblings, and children, and who regularly lugged station wagons full of canvases, easels and pegboards to art fairs. When I was 15 I sold one of her paintings for $250 at the Chicago Gold Coast fair while she was out shopping - a real buzz, and guaranteed to put her in a good mood the rest of the day... Her left eye is not so good anymore, so she's given up portrait painting, but her landscapes are as rich as ever. She says that she likes these forest paintings now - "There's nothing romantic about them, no hidden grottos, no Virgin Marys, just trees." I love them.
Edit 2020 - My mother passed away 4 November, 2019.