Karen Seapker is a Nashville-based painter whose work explores themes of connection and the passage of time through bold color, expressive gesture, and shifting forms. Her work has been exhibited nationally and is included in major museum collections across the country.
Karen Seapker is a painter who navigates physical, emotional, and intellectual connections through use of bold color combinations, historical references, shifting lines, and disrupted spaces. She uses both a dynamic, gestural style as well as observational techniques to create paintings and works on paper depicting imagery that alludes to the power of human relationships, our connections to nature, and the passage of time. She received her MFA from Hunter College in New York, NY. Her work has been exhibited in spaces including the James Cohan Gallery in NYC and Shanghai, The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, PA, Rhona Hoffman Gallery in Chicago, and Sargent's Daughters in Los Angeles. Seapker was included in Crystal Bridges Museum’s survey of contemporary art, State of the Art 2020.
Her work is in various private collections as well as the collection of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and most recently displayed in the lobby of Bobby Nashville as part of the latest installment of The Collection: Intersection. Reviews of her work have been in publications including Burnaway, Hyperallergic, and ArtForum. She lives and works in Nashville, TN.
What was the moment you knew you had to pursue art professionally?
I think I’m still deciding about this, all the time… asking myself, do I still want to wonder at this level? And yet painting remains my favorite way to reflect upon the things I am thinking about and experiencing and also remains a practice that allows for a continued path for growth and discovery. There is still such a fascination and joy in the process of making something new and standing in front of it and wondering, “where did you come from?”
Let’s dive into your creative process. What does a typical day in the studio look like?
There are so many different days in the studio, some days just sketching and thinking. Some days, assembling stretchers and stretching canvas. When I’m actually painting, I like to get in there early in the morning before my children wake up and assess where things are, enjoy the quiet before everyone else in the house wakes up. My studio is at the back of my home, so inevitably, someone will come out and ask for breakfast. Later, once the kids are off to school, I settle in with either music, a podcast, or an audiobook- depending on what kind of painting I am doing, and I’m a bit of a worker bee. I do take occasional breaks to go walk in the garden outside my studio. It helps to return with fresh eyes to look at the work. I also do a lot of moving paintings around, putting them in different places, in conversation with different paintings, to see what they may have to say in different contexts. I work until the kids come home and every evening is different depending on what is going on for the family, so there are some afternoons when I have to stop and take a child to dance class or another where they go outside and play and I continue painting through dinner (which my sweet husband will deliver to me in the studio) and then sometimes again after bedtime. All depending on deadlines and the practicalities of our needs. With the studio connected to the home, all must remain very flexible.
Are there any common themes you explore in your artwork?
I feel like I’m always making paintings about time, about mortality. Lately, I’ve been reflecting on these things through the consideration of gardening and the experience of ebbs and flows of the ecosystem surrounding me. Every year, I just can’t get over the overwhelming awe of how such a robust landscape returns from nothingness in all its splendor every garden season. It’s a cyclical space that moves with a natural breath of abundance and loss, repair and decay, providing a practice in grieving and healing. And within this cycle, I’m interested in how we participate, what we can contribute. There are a lot of seed sowers in my work who I imagine are helping to steward continued growth and care for the space around them.
Speaking of themes, how does your work in Bobby Nashville’s The Collection: Yin Yang explore its theme?
The painting at Bobby Nashville is the very first Sower that I ever made. It is in direct reference to The Sower paintings and drawings by Millet and van Gogh, but reformatted to fit more of my own experience. I don’t think I anticipated that this would be such a seminal painting, but I have made so many sower paintings since then and I know I have more in me to come. So that figure feels really special to me as the first.
I’ve also been through a lot with that painting. That painting made it through the 2020 tornado and was pulled out of a flooded and totally wrecked studio building. It was then in a solo show that was closed down in March of 2020 because of COVID. During Covid, I read Octavia Butler’s “Parable of the Sower” and her incredible character, Lauren Olamina became embedded in my mind with this piece. The piece for me is about pushing onwards, in spite of it all.
What’s your favorite place you've traveled to, and how has it inspired you or your work?
So much recent work actually takes inspiration from my own backyard, but I think that in terms of inspiration I’ve gained from travel, it has to be solo trips to New York, where art-viewing is on the top of my agenda. I lived in New York for about 7 years before I moved here and I miss going to see so much work in the museums and galleries. So when I get to go, I write up extensive agendas to see as much as possible, and that can feed me for a while.
What’s your go-to Nashville restaurant spot?
I love Lyra… delicious fresh food, good cocktails, small seasonal menu.
If you could have dinner with any three people, dead or alive, who would they be and why?
Let’s say… James Baldwin, Ross Gay, and Helen Molesworth maybe? James Baldwin, for obvious reasons. Everything that came out of his mouth was brilliance, Ross Gay because he’s one of my current favorite writers and also a true lover of gardening. I am a huge fan of everything that he writes and just who he is and how he lives in the world. And I think I’d add Helen Molesworth who I think is a great conversationalist and thinker. I have really enjoyed her hosting the David Zwirner Conversations podcast. She is caring and thoughtful about so many aspects of contemporary culture, and I can imagine she’d have incredible questions for the other two.
Are there any local artists, musicians, or creators in Nashville whose work you particularly admire?
So many! There are some great artists living and working in Nashville and I’m lucky to live in a place with so many ambitious and creative people. I’m going to pivot a tiny bit and mention some of the creative people in the plant world that I think are all worth paying more attention to. I’m a huge fan of the new Wonder Gift & Garden shop in Kingston Springs. Go there to find carefully selected and grown native plants that you know will contribute greatly to our local ecosystems. I love everything that Garden Buddy gets their hands on and works on- from helping people with their own yards to facilitating fruit tree pruning workshops. And everyone should check out author Jo Brichetto- both on bookshelves with the new “This is How a Robin Drinks” and also her Instagram is extremely informative!
What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
I worked for a wonderful artist in New York. He told me essentially that there are so many ways that people try to become an artist. Some people try to network their way there, but he said, there will always be someone funnier or who can party longer. Others try to be the best at their craft, but there will always be those phenoms whose skill set outpaces your own. He said, the only thing that you can do better than anyone else is to be yourself; the most vulnerable, honest, idiosyncratic version of yourself. It’s the only thing no one else can do better than you.
What's on the horizon for you? What can we look forward to next?
I have a solo show in January 2026 with Red Arrow. While I have been loving working with the ladies at Red Arrow for some time, this will be my first solo show at their gallery, and so I’m very excited!
