Karen Stewart is a figurative artist working in ink, pastels, watercolor and acrylic paints. As a lifelong learner herself, Karen made the difficult decision in 2016 to stop teaching studio art and art history in a public high school to pursue her own art full time.

Story has always been very important to Karen's motivation and creative process. Her "female gaze" delights in her models' clothing, jewelry, props and the settings that they are placed in. They are clues to the stories of her models'  lives, or perhaps clues to the story of Karen's life.  
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Karen spent the summer of 2017 in Florence, Italy, at the Santa Reparata International School of Art (SRISA). She twice received National Endowment for the Arts participant grants for drawing and painting at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She was also selected to attend the Power of Art Workshop – A day with Jeff Koons, sponsored by the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation and the Lab School of Washington, D.C.
 
Karen is currently a co-chair of the Northeast Chapter of the Wisconsin Visual Artists.