Karen
Bagayawa
MIXED MEDIA ARTIST
Artist Karen Bagayawa lives in Coquitlam, BC. Through twenty years of exploration into sculpture, painting, weaving and dyeing, she has developed a personal mixed-media process, making paintings that are in collections in Japan, Singapore, United Kingdom, Canada, United States, Luxembourg, Australia, Shanghai, France and Italy. We spoke on a recent October afternoon.
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CRSC: Please tell us a little bit about yourself
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KB: I grew up in Cambridge Ontario, studied Fine Arts at Queens University, and after graduating, moved to Japan for five years. Those five years really shaped the work I make now, particularly through my relationship with three Japanese artists, two painters and a printmaker, who became my mentors.
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At Queens, I was interested in both sculpture and painting. So, in Japan, I began to experiment with ways of bringing the two media together. I layered grout onto fabric and then cracked the grout skin once it had dried. Onto this I painted thin washes of acrylic, gradually building up a layered colour field. At first, I worked on commercially made fabrics; later, after my return to Canada and my degree from the Professional Textile Arts Program at Capilano College, I began to weave and dye my own textiles. These early years, dedicated to exploration and discovery, led to media and processes that I continue to work with.
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CRSC: How does colour play into your work?
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KB: In Japan I became aware of hagi-yaki ware, a Japanese pottery that can have 90 or more layers of glaze. In my work, I am interested in the way a layer of colour maintains its ‘colour identity’ even when part of an ensemble of colours that can consist of up to seventy-five or eighty layers.
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I spend a lot of time in nature searching for and observing colour. I ‘dissect’ colour from natural forms, thinking of the ratios of colours that contribute to the overall effect. I then return to the studio, sometimes mixing a glaze from these ratios, sometimes arranging colour swatches to find the results I am looking for.
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I also think a lot about colour when commissioned to make work. Each colour – each tone – has negative and positive attributes. I think about colour harmonies, the way a field of colour will act in a space, and the effect this will have on the inhabitants of that space.
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CRSC: Is there a ‘colour experience’ that made an impression on you?
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KB: Yes! I keep returning to the colour blue. A year ago I began a mentorship with the Advanced Colour Group Mentoring Program that led to a certificate in Applied Colour and Design Psychology. That program allowed me to think deeply about my relationship with specific colours.
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I have a very positive childhood association with the colour blue from time spent among bolts of cloth on my mother’s frequent trips to a fabric shop. But I also have a powerful negative relationship to the colour red that is the result of my family’s resistance to me choosing to study art. My university application-portfolio, consisting of many works that centered around the colour red, was thrown away just before my admissions interview. I had to miss my interview, and wait a full year to apply again. It was deeply traumatic, and resulted in my not using the colour red for many, many years. Recently, though, I have been thinking about and working with kintsugi, the Japanese tradition of mending broken pottery with veins of lacquer mixed with gold. Everyone has scars; kintsugi teaches us that our experiences make us who we are and how we see the world around us.
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WEBSITE: https://www.karenbagayawa.com/
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Below Left: Karen's studio. Middle: Tools. Right: A Study in Cobalt Blue and Sap Green. Mixed media. 2024. Images courtesy of the artist.