Inside the Moments

Link Pin Art

Presents

Karn Knutson

“Inside the Moments”

April 18 – May 11

Opening reception:  April 18, 5-7

When you look closely, you can see expansive, beautiful stories in the smallest details. A hand gesture, a head tilt, a shift in weight on one’s feet. Karn Knutson’s prints explore the gestures and expressions we share universally but are uniquely our own in the moments we’re living. Everywhere Knutson has lived, where she’s traveled, the cafés she’s lingered in, she watches people. She tries to see their stories in those brief glimpses and translate them onto the page. Her tall, slender figures are intended to represent an individual’s place in their existence — like a single line on a vast plane, one moment in time. Expressing ideas through the simple gestures of her “stick figures” lets the viewer interpret the story without too many literal details getting in the way, letting the ideas expand beyond the edges.

Knutson shows us ourselves in moments of reflection, contemplating the transitions through life, processing the struggles, finding ways forward with knowledge, sometimes hard lessons from our past, and learning from our choices good and bad—the things we all feel but can’t always express until we see something that lets us talk about it outside ourselves.

Knutson’s art has been described as: “a subliminal and dreamy version of life,” “my heart stylized on paper,” “dreams I have, but can’t explain,” and “music on the page.” She asks the viewer: What is the story you see? Does the story you see feel familiar? Does it make you smile or think? Does it remind you of a time you had forgotten? Or a time you dream to be in? She loves to hear the diversity of interpretations that others see in her work. They inspire in her whole new moments to explore. What story do you see?

Isn’t life lovely when you look at it, just right, or crooked, or without your eyes at all.

Karn Knutson has a BFA from Minneapolis College of Art & Design, worked as a Creative Director in advertising, and is also a fiction writer and illustrator of satirical and children’s books. She’s an avid dog auntie, and a songwriter who enjoys performing original music to crowds large and small, or just the dogs. (They’re big fans.) At university, Knutson fell in love with the immediacy and unique visual depth of one-of-a-kind oil monotypes. Through her style of figurative abstract expressionism, she utilizes vibrant colors to portray subjects that range from austere and contemplative to whimsical and curious.