Artist Bio
Karen Safer is a photographic artist, writer, documenter, and poet with a musical bent. As a native Angelino, she was given a camera and crayons at 3 and exposed to dominant California motifs: light, palm trees, ocean, music, and vernacular architecture that helped define her left-handed aesthetic. Fortunate to begin a life of travel as a pre-teen, it shaped her love of the exotic paired with an eye for the “beautiful” and formal; subsequently she has traveled and photographed in over 230 countries. She was influenced by her dad who developed black & white photos in their back washroom and by her mother’s thirst for knowledge and travel.
She received a master’s degree in art from CSULB and UCLA. Her career includes design and architecture firms; she is the principal of ArtFocus International. Initially, she began painting and printmaking alongside the study of art and architectural history before wholly embracing photography with influences from the ancients to Cindy Sherman.
Not sure if behind or ahead of the times, she has been in over 10 solo shows and 140+ juried and group exhibitions, most lately in London, Rome, Glasgow, Zurich, Budapest, Athens, Prague, Barcelona, Hawaii, Canada and from California to New York winning Talent, Merit, and Honorable Mention Awards.
She is a member of several art and charitable organizations. And is a self-described “romantic soul” with intellectual cravings, currently residing in Playa del Rey.