Bio	Karen Lehrer	2016-11-30T08:45:15-08:00
Southern California based painter, Karen Lehrer has been pursuing creative artistic expressions since childhood. This former textile designer creates nonobjective, multi layered paintings rich with texture and reoccurring themes. She captures the essence of architecture and nature, the shapes, colors and forms and combines them with her own personal and symbolic vocabulary. Karen's work is celebrated by interior designers for her imaginative use of color and repeating patterns.
Karen's talents and vision took shape early in her career as a textile designer, buyer and stylist for a Fortune 500 company. Her travels and assignments instilled a lifelong passion for art and design. At the height of this success she left the textile industry to begin a course of studies with artist and teacher Martin Lubner. His private tutorials, for select students, in Venice, California, taught Karen a visual language. This allowed her to translate the images in her imagination into her paintings.
She developed an insatiable appetite for learning about psychology. Once she had exhausted laymen studies she enrolled in the master's program at Pacifica Graduate Institute. There she received her Marriage & Family Therapist license. In her own private practice, first in Malibu and later in Santa Barbara, Karen counseled both individuals and couples. Simultaneously she continued her fine art studies and exhibited her paintings in group and solo shows throughout Southern California. The combination of both art and psychological processes created a healing model for her creative and high profile clients.
Karen received her BA from Antioch University, Los Angeles and attended the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, where she also taught. Recently she studied with the widely acclaimed painter Nicholas Wilton. Under his guidance she rediscovered the authenticity, spontaneity and joy of her creative process.
Widely traveled, Karen's interests are as diverse as her paintings; quantum physics, skiing, gardening, hiking and kayaking. Her talent for interior design can be seen in her well-appointed Santa Barbara home where she lives with her husband, Dr. Steve Sherwin and their pets Stan and Blue Boy.