Karen Benjamin started her art career as a painter. By 1993 her paintings had begun to evolve as abstractions of geometric designs, a significant departure from the realistic rendering of portraits and landscapes she had favored in earlier works.

Living in Santa Fe, Karen became enamored with textiles of this area: the flat, geometric designs and the wonderful texture and "hand" of the woven surface. When a friend offered to loan her a loom, she happily accepted.

In two years she mastered the techniques of woven tapestry, and in the process she was able to combine her interest in color with Amish quilt designs, Navajo geometry and the Southwestern landscape. Now she could make personal statements with a weaving style uniquely her own.

Because color is a dominant concern, Karen dyes her yarns to careful color specifications using the very best of synthetic dyes. She works with subtle color gradations. This use of gradation, or color mixing, sets Karen's work apart from the flat color shapes found in traditional Southwest weaving. In some pieces this visual layering of color offers a sense of depth that is distinct from the perspective and illusion of "deep space" often found in painting.

What Karen tries to capture in her weavings, and create for the eye and mind of the beholder, is a sense of serenity. She feels that when there is a proper balancing of both the color relationships and the geometry of the design she can achieve that result. She firmly believes that meditative space and mood are expressed better through weaving that any other medium - that weavings's quiet, accumulative working process shows up as content in the completed piece.

Karen will be featured in a one-woman show in the fall of 2006