Karen Tamminga-Paton
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  • About
  • Shop
    • Available Originals
    • Reproductions
    • Retail Locations
  • Collaborations
    • PeaceTalks
    • Personalized Family Tree Painting
    • Flight of the Corvids
    • The Willing Suspension of Disbelief
  • Contact
  • Gallery
For art cards and prints of many of these images , please click HERE. 

Available Original Art for Purchase

Arranged in alphabetical order  (Note:  NW = current work from the last several years; EW = early work)
Picture
At the Take Out  (EW)
24x48, acrylic and collaged paper on wood-framed canvas
$3260
 
Three beached canoes at the end of an Algonquin excursion with our daughters and some friends.  There's something so raw, so humbling and good about paddling through heavy rain, cold and wind.  Perspective is offered.  Well-being is a gift you do not take for granted.  

Picture
​#beloved  (EW)
120x144, acrylic on 3 birch panels; includes separate frame
$10,000

​This 3-panelled large work is intended for a large, public space and invites the viewer to settle in its centre, held and loved.  Read more about this installation HERE on the Collaborations ​page.
Picture

Cadence:  The Rhythm of Sounds (NW)
​10x18, diptych - acrylic and embroidery thread
$540

This tiny female housesparrow traverses through the night skies in a characteristic undulating flight pattern as drawn in by the embroidered thread.  These shiftings of creatures are hidden to most of us, but if you could see in the dark  you would see the skies are alive with movement. 
Picture
Descant  (NW)
36x52, triptych - acrylic on 3 canvases  (Note:  middle canvas is gallery wrap, the two flanking canvases are regular wrap, allowing the central canvas to stand)
$3275
"The prefix, des-, meaning 'two' or 'apart' indicates that the descant is a second song apart from the main melody.  A counterpart.  The art of composing or improvising contrapuntal part music." 
The title suitably describes the disruption/invitation of these last few years.  I've found myself improvising around the melodies I've once believed were complete.  Launching into a descant is pure joy to hear, like a thrilling crescendo to a familiar tune, but horrible if not done right.  It still much work with the melody.
Picture

​Encounters With the Divine (We Wrestle)   (NW)
30x24, acrylic on canvas
$1980

These eagle/boat paintings are a series that explore the changing nature of my personal faith. The boat suggests one's life journey and can refer to an individual, community or even our society.  Engaging with these boats is the eagle, the Mysterious One, God.  I hesitate to suggest that I wrestle to the extent that i am completely upended as in this image, adrift in disembodied space.  It is a completely outrageous situation.  No paddle, no water or current to counter razor sharp talons attached to the one who masters the air.  I don't know how this encounter will turn out.  The boat could very well crash into a thousand sponters after a long descent. 
But what if it were, instead, a dance in rarified air; a playful exchange of environments?  Perhaps the canoe is freed from the constraints of gravity and flow and actually enjoys a version of flight as long as the eagle is near it?  I have no idea.  
Picture
Glimpses of Blue (NW)
​36x12, acrylic on canvas
$1290.

As is often the case in my studio practice, a painting is generated by something I am ruminating one.  This, then, is a process painting.  I had no idea where it would lead me.  The thing about a painting of this nature is that you have to trust it.  The painting leads, not the painter.  The nest-like structure at the base was first a boat, a coracle, a nest, a pile of bones, then a nest again.  Or perhaps it was a crown of thorns.  The lines lead upward, through the sail, to the tiniest blue rectangle situated so close to the top that it might slip right off the canvas.  And, it might!  This is the precarious nature of hope.  It might be out of reach.  It could slip right out of our grasp.  It asks that we attend to it.  In such a process, room is created to think, to remember, to settle into quiet respite despite the lament.  It is my way to pray. 
Picture
Good Words to Float My Boat  (NW)
12 x x24, acrylic and paper on canvas
$450

One of several paintings that riff off of the "What Floats My Boat" piece using the written words of many who contributed to the question, "what gives you hope now, in these times?"  These words, shared on small sail-shaped papers, make up the single sail with many masts.
Picture

Heron:  A Time for Slow  (NW) 
36x36, acyrlic, inks, charcoal, papers on wood-framed canvas
​$3665

A reference to the poet John O'Donohue's words, this is the time for slow.
We live in days when it is a time to listen to the elders, to enquire of poets;
A time to return to self and get reacquainted ;
To inhabit my body and gather by the fires of longing.

Re-membering.

Picture



​Heron:  Contemplative  (NW)
24x20 acrylic and Posca pen on canvas
$1440

​As I observe this regal bird, slow flyer, patient hunter, observant, dignified . . . and yet undeniably gangly and awkward, I can't help but think they are much like we humans.  There is a curious kinship.  
One of a series on the great blue heron, Contemplative looks at the more mythical quality of this bird.  Flight between heaven and earth, land and water, the great blue is servant to neither and moves easily from realm to realm.  
Picture


Heron:  Through A Veil of Tears   (NW)
30x40, acrylic and collaged papers on wood-framed canvas
$3100.

Because our world is groaning under the weight of injustices and pain.  And I will love it. . . for it has loved me, all of it wrapped in imperfection.
Picture
Heron:  Seeker (NW)
(24x48. acrylic and Posca pen on canvas)
$3160

As I observe this regal bird, slow flyer, patient hunter, observant, dignified . . . and yet gangly and awkward, I can't help but think they are much like we humans.  There is a curious kinship.  One of a series on the great blue heron, Seeker embodies yearning.  Flight between heaven and earth, land and water, the great blue is servant to neither and moves easily from realm to realm.  

Picture
wood

Herons:  We Are Kin; Who Gets to Look Away? (NW)
48x36, acrylic on wood-framed canvas
$4420

Who looks; who looks away? A group of herons offers a metaphor for our current times, as we give air to our narratives of faith, politics, war and peace.  What we gaze at shapes our inner landscapes, leans us toward one or the other, gives us words that shape landscape.  And yet, we are all inescapably part of something larger.  For better or for worse, we are intertwined, regardless of the direction of our gaze.  I want to think that we can work toward our mutual flourishing.  

​
Picture

In Search of a New Narrative  (NW)
30x24, acrylic on black-framed canvas
$1980.


It seems that so much of what I thought was immoveable, solid and enduring is not.  Institutions like the church, government, education are not beyond interrogation after all.  They do not have impunity.  We get to review, study, examine, investigate, question, even separate.  We get to sift through what we once knew -- in fact, it's important that we do so.   

Some things are desperately in need of re-imagining.  


Picture
Spring Prayer  (EW)
24x12, acrylic on gallery-wrap canvas 
​$860

​There were 5 snowstorms that April.  I love winter, but I began wearing a flowered scarf just to remind myself that spring would come, that crocuses were forming under all that snow.  On a whim, I tied this scarf between the trees and stood back to enjoy the new view.  I stared at it for a long time, a feast of promise and colour in what seemed a perpetually grey world.  It offered a metaphor.  During darker times, these moments open my thoughts to consider what is beyond my immediate view.  
Picture




This Weight We Carry  (NW)
48x36, acrylic, collaged paper on wood-framed canvas
$4420

A painting that honours the grandmothers who give care to those in front of them and behind them; who curl protectively over their young ones, lips moving in prayer, while looking over their shoulder at the feeble and aged, knowing their lives are carried by that same current.  It is the current of time, but also of great love.  
Here, the branches are ever more intricate as they cross borders and span generations.  

So much weight in one small vessel.  

​
Picture
Treehugger:  Black Cottonwood With Lee-Anne (NW) 
64x64, acrylic on 4 separate wood-framed canvases 
(note:  this image has been digitally "stitched" together for easier viewing)
$8200
​
Just west of Fernie, British Columbia, are some of the oldest known cottonwoods in the world.  They are protected by the Nature Conservatory of Canada.  Lee-Anne is one of those individuals whose heart for wilderness has led her to advocate with both intelligence and passion for sustainable use of our wild spaces.  She also happens to be one of my dearest friends in the world. 
Picture


What Floats My Boat  (NW)
48 x 24, acrylic, paper & markers on birch panel
$3160
​​

In response to the pervasive nature of alienation and fatigue, especially post covid, I asked the question, “What gives hope, now, in these times?”  I invited anyone I could to share their thoughts on a small, torn piece of paper meant to resemble a sail.  Over the months these paper sails found their way back to me.  They arrived in envelopes from across Canada, they were shyly handed to me in the grocery store or left anonymously in my studio mailbox.  I was moved by their simple candor.  Many more arrived than I expected or could use, but every contribution is represented on this painting, either by collage or by scribing the words within the liminal space between the forms. 
These words, mostly from strangers, were impactful.  Reading through these 200+ offerings did not solidify certainty or explain to me how to grasp on to hope, elusive as it is. Hope comes in such a wide range of shapes and sizes, after all; your hope is not necessarily what ignites my hope.  But as I read the words, it struck me that hope could be seen as a pace setter, a way maker.  Not what, but how.  We can ignite it in one another.  It is found, together, in community.



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Picture



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​When Patterns Break (and the Cranes Still Dance)  NW
30 x 24, acrylic, patterned paper collaged on to wood-framed canvas
$1980

A meditation on patterns.  Some anchor; some entangle.  I think of the sandhill cranes, these tall gangly b irdsthat startle me each time I catch a glimpse of one.  Once I watched a pair dance and could hardly breathe for the beauty of it.  When my world feels a bit untethered, these magnificent birds still dance.  They gather to migrate, they take to the skies in their great flocks season by season and make a tremendous chorus.  And they will return again.  

​If you are interested in purchasing an original, please contact me:

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 Copyright 2026 Karen Tamminga-Paton.    Crowsnest Pass, Alberta, Canada
All rights reserved including the right to reproduce and sell images based on her art.