Michael Kareken
Night Reflection (large version).jpg

Night Shadows / 2021-2023

This series of watercolor monotypes was produced in collaboration with the Highpoint Center for Printmaking in Minneapolis. The work focuses on the landscape where I grew up in the Pacific Northwest.  The monotypes were made by painting with watercolor on a thin polyester plate which was then transferred to a sheet of paper on the press.  I used both additive and subtractive processes to make the images, putting down washes and marks that were allowed to dry before being lifted and revised by re-wetting the plate.

Information about the series is available from The Highpoint Center for Printmaking.

 

Night Shadows / 2021-2023

Night Reflection, conte on duralar, 18” x 24”

Night Shadows is an ongoing series of drawings and prints first exhibited in 2022. The work explores subjects drawn from close to home: a circumscribed world of neighborhood streets and houses, interiors and window views. This series was made in response to the pandemic, when contact was restricted and routines were disrupted. These changes brought with them a heightened awareness of the places and spaces of daily life. As the world has returned to a semblance of normality, the experience continues to reverberate.

The subjects are depicted after dark, the familiar locations transformed by night light and shadow. People are absent, but their presence is implied by porch lights, parked cars and snowy footprints. The work focuses primarily on the viewer’s relationship to the depicted scene, with subjective or off-balance perspectives suggesting an observer’s presence within the space.

The most recent images place the viewer inside looking out, the scene beyond the window obscured and fragmented by reflections of the interior space. These images present a world that is subtly destabilized as forms dissolve into the shadows and inside and outside merge, making it hard for the viewer to know exactly what they are seeing or where they are standing.