Poignant Pics no. 51 - On Karen Divine's "Almsgiving"
Welcome to no. 51 in our series Poignant Pics where our editor, Diana Nicholette Jeon, Karen Divine's "Almsgiving"
Meditative Creations
One definition of photography means 'drawing with light,' which derives from the Greek photo, meaning light, and graph, meaning to draw. To many, most especially the purists amongst us, it is strictly the process of recording an image on light-sensitive film or, in the case of digital photography, via a digital electronic or magnetic memory. Not everyone holds to that exact strict definition. If you know my past work, you might be familiar with my series entitled Self-Exposure. If not, netting it down it is a conceptual series based on layering and combining different photographic pieces of myself and other original photos with traditional and digital painting and drawing, created using iPhone and iPad. And therein lays how I first crossed paths with the work of Karen Divine. I've been lightly acquainted with Karen for about 8 years through the mobile photo community on Facebook. Though she occasionally produces some traditional photography works, she is most renowned for her style of imagery shown here.
To me, Divine paints with photographs, not paints onto or into them, and I genuinely mean that Karen uses them as a painter might use paint. She works intuitively, beginning by selecting a group of pictures and then beginning with a blank page, layering in images, erasing, creating new characters, and painting and erasing.
Almsgiving
Her working process is something she calls 'mindless creativity.' She allows the pieces to evolve intuitively, not knowing what the result may become. Divine says that she pushes beyond what she knows and allows the magic to happen by working with the images and allowing them to speak. "Characters" (for lack of a better word) emerge, and some get replaced or left behind. Eventually, the story unfolds and becomes clear to her, all via a process of semi-controlled intuitive play. One symbol may dictate some of the others as the point of the work emerges from Divine's subconscious.
Although the resulting look is different, her process has much in common with painter Jane Hammond. Hammond also works meditatively, and her works use a visual lexicon of often repeated symbols. Hammond told Pace Prints that her process of putting together an image has "more to do with duration than texture. I see it as a function of time, like the idea of chanting." That's not all that different than how Divine writes about her working processes. When you look through the various series Divine has created since 2009, you find the lexicon that she continually references. These "characters" that Divine has created form a sort of personal visual symbology: chairs, young Indian girls, an Indian Sadhu, nude figures, animals, and birds.
This image, Almsgiving, is about gratitude. Divine stated, "She is grateful for all the lessons that come her way in life without judgment." She went on to state, "The symbolism of the portrait on the left is important; the choice of characters that appeared is significant to me." Divine has a fully developed explanation of the image that you can view on her website. For my purposes, I prefer to view work and decide what it means to me without a didactic explanation of each element within. How I read it upon first viewing was two people surrounded by chaos, reaching out to each other in either love or forgiveness, or both. In the era of Covid, it could have been the chaos created by it, or it might be something entirely unrelated. Although that is not precisely what Karen wanted me to take from the image, it works for me that way as well as it does in her more personal meaning for it.
I realize that some readers may disagree that this is "photography" and have their own definition for work like this. I'm not trying to change anyone's mind on the label; a label is just that. For my purposes of writing about it (and creating work using a similar method,) it is a form of boundary-pushing photography. I know I am not alone in my view, as Karen's work has received many photography awards over more than ten years.
Whatever you wish to call it, I hope you enjoy this work as much as I did. I hope Divine keeps creating these unique, puzzling, enticing works for years to come. Bravo, Karen!
Artist Bio
Armed with an iPhone and an imagination, Karen Divine creates surrealistic scenes crafted through her photographs. She brings to life a world of color, symbolism, and imagination that are often reflections of her own personal experiences. In the early 70’s she bought a Nikkormat Camera and began her journey. Over the next 40 years she studied art wherever she could and in 2010, transferred her skills from a DSLR to the iPhone, winning important International Photography Awards and shown in galleries around the world. She has spoken at MacWorld and taught at venues like the Santa Fe Photographic Workshops. Her book “A Small Amount of Courage” has won an IPA Award and Independent Publishers Award for Inspiration.
Find more about this image, and more of Karen’s work and writing here: https://www.karendivinephotography.com/galleries/
Author Bio
Diana Nicholette Jeon is an award-winning artist based in Honolulu, HI, who works primarily with lens-based media. Her work has been seen both internationally and nationally in solo and group exhibitions. Jeon holds an MFA from UMBC.