Karen Lee Crenshaw Named Featured Artist for the 2025 Art Show and Sale

Karen Lee Crenshaw of Jacksonville, NC, has been selected as the featured artist for NSA's 2025 Art Show and Sale, which will take place January 25, 2025 through February 2, 2025 in the Lower School at the Main Campus.

Karen has been drawing since she was a child. She earned a Bachelor of Science in art education from Concord University and a Master of Fine Arts in painting from The George Washington University. Since 2008, she has participated in dozens of art events across coastal North Carolina and beyond and has received numerous awards for her work. Karen has also taught privately and in public schools. She continues her own training with numerous well-known artists, including John Poon, Michael Shane Neal, Tom Nash and Jermy Sams.

Karen was born in the Midwest and lived in the mountains of West Virginia and Virginia before settling in coastal North Carolina, where she has lived for more than two decades. She currently maintains Crenshaw Art Studio in her home in Jacksonville and at ArtExposure in Hampstead, NC. The area's marshes, rivers and lakes and the vessels that sail upon them capture her eye, particularly in early morning and late afternoon light.

"The goal of my landscape paintings is to give the viewer a sense of place," says Karen. "I want them to see what I am seeing and to feel that is a place they have been or would like to visit. Plein air painting inspires me to capture the quality of the light that sets off that connection. Many of my paintings depict the pinkish-blue tones of early morning light or the amber tones of late afternoon. I love the contrasts of forms and oblique angles and shapes that occur when the sun is low on the horizon. My challenge is to capture that moment in time, working quickly and keeping a dynamic abstract pattern with energetic brush strokes."

In addition to landscapes, Karen accepts portrait commissions, specializing in portraits of women and children. Her work is traditional and lifelike, yet it maintains a painterly quality. She enjoys providing clients with an heirloom that will last for many generations.

"I especially love working with children and capturing that innocence that seems to pass so quickly," says Karen.

Karen's landscapes were selected for reproduction in a book, "Painting North Carolina, A Visual Journey," by Kimberly Maselli. Her work joins those of 32 regionally and nationally known landscape painters.