Through her nostalgia-tinged sight, Danish artist Karen Smidth examples the distinctive landscape and fresh, seaside color palette of Northern California. Working primarily with hilly, ocean-hewn surroundings, her compositions lead our eyes up and over into the beyond.

Embodying of a characteristic tranquility, Smidth's paintings are both a reflection of her personal history and an ode to the phenomenal views encircling the Bay Area. "The landscape gives me a wonderful excuse to paint," says Smidth of her inspirations. "It allows me to travel under the heavenly skies and search for the essential vistas and split seconds of time that will carry me through my next series of paintings."

Born in Aarhus, Denmark, California-based Karen Smidth has never been a stranger to examining landscapes through an artful lens. At a young age, Smidth started an apprenticeship at a traditional printing house on her home country's western coast. Having moved to Copenhagen to attend design school shortly thereafter, Smidth initially set her course as the founder of her own design business. In the mid 1980s, the opportunity to expand within the field brought her to the San Francisco Bay Area. It was here that Smidth reconnected with landscape and paint, immersing herself first at the Academy of Art University and then at the College of Marin. Smidth’s former yearning for her Danish homeland transformed into a passionate embrace of the captivating terrain of Northern California— in this new homeland, she created an expansive garden to nurture herself and her children while paralleling her new odyssey of frequent hikes along our majestic coastlands and mountains.

Merging memories of her Scandinavian home with those present in her daily life here in California, Smidth has expanded her practice with warm-colored medium to large-format oil paintings, her personal visual language evocative of her journey and a nod to both San Francisco Bay Area's figurative works & Danish still-life paintings. Having exhibited nationally and regionally, the popular appeal of Smidth’s work can be found in her rounded tones, sloping vantage points, & emotionally resonant design aesthetic.

"My paintings are not pure renditions of nature or place, rather they are paintings of a poetic moment in my memory... distilled time, and nature working like an elixir for the mind... perhaps a form of meditation. My good fortune lies in sharing these painted moments with the world, as I am most often alone when I am there experiencing them... It is a reflective process to pour these meditations into a visual form through layers of pigment, oil, linen and time," says Smidth.

"I feel very lucky and deeply grateful to live this free life as a painter."