BORN TO CREATE
As she approached becoming an empty-nester, Karla Chambers decided to expand her horizons, so she purchased a canvas, paints, and brushes and began to paint. Having had no prior experience or training, she simply used her natural instincts as she applied color and design. It was quickly apparent that Karla’s sense of color and use of texture and style were unique and extremely engaging. She became known as a Naïve painter — untutored or trained, but with her own expressive and stylistic alphabet entirely uninfluenced by any school of painting. She exhibits her own vision of the harmony and beauty of the natural world, which is uniquely different from that of any other painter.
Karla is no stranger to the rich colors and textures of nature, however. She was born in North Central Oregon and was immersed in a rich agricultural environment from her earliest years. She inherited a profound love of farming from her father, which resulted in her co-founding an extremely successful sustainable farming business with her husband, Bill, in the Willamette Valley of Western Oregon. She and her husband have four children and live in Corvallis, Oregon.
Karla’s powerful sense of color and objects expresses the nurturing and protective values of family life, the rhythms of climate and soil, and complexities of the business world—all expressions of the many crosscurrents in her world: family, agriculture, business, and economics. She creates her paintings to show the beauty of the physical world as seen from a farm and also to help inspire and facilitate important conversations of the day.
Over the past few years, Karla’s reputation as an artist has grown rapidly. She is currently showing her work at Arnot Gallery in New York, NY, Gallery 444 in San Francisco, CA, Galerie du Soleil in Naples, FL, and Lara Sydney Gallery in Portland, OR. Her art has been featured in special events at both the San Francisco and Portland galleries. Karla has built up a body of patrons and collectors from around the country and as far away as India. She has also participated in several juried competitions, special art shows throughout Oregon, and serves as a panelist at select art gatherings.
In 2013, Karla will have a continued presence in three Museums: the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Arton the University of Oregon campus in Eugene, OR for a “Living Legacies” exhibit; the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI), Portland, OR for an educational display relating color and nutrition; and the Benton County Historical Society and Museum, in Corvallis, OR for an exclusive showing of 30 of Karla’s brilliant pieces depicting nature and our local terrain.
