Meet
Karen Stamper
Karen's collages are full of light, movement, and the kind of confident mark-making that comes from decades of practice. She creates a relaxed, generous studio atmosphere wherever she teaches.
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Karen grew up on the east coast of Yorkshire as a happy beachcomber, drawn to paint-peeling boats, gaudy plastic scraps, and brightly colored fishing floats. Those boatyard memories became her lifelong subject. At art college, she was drawn to the dense, flat colors of silk screen printing, and a travel scholarship brought her face to face with Matisse’s cut-outs for the first time, the scale, the intensity, the pinholes and torn edges left a lasting mark on her work.
She developed her collage practice while teaching secondary school art, combining found papers with layers of painted paper and water-based paint, constructed and deconstructed again and again until the surface holds together. She left teaching over a decade ago to pursue collage and sketchbooks full time, and has since exhibited with &Gallery, ING Discerning Eye, Bankside Gallery, and the Society of Women Artists, winning their Body of Work Prize twice. She was a Contemporary Collage Magazine prize winner in 2023 and longlisted for the Jackson’s Art Prize in 2024.
“I don’t feel like a tourist with a camera,” she says. “I become part of the scene.” She’s based in Cambridge, England.
Medium: Mixed Media
Join in: Spain
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Artist Interview: Karen Stamper
What inspires you?
Travel, old crumbling surfaces, old buildings, boats in harbour, urban scenes, colour, patchings and fixings, beautiful line, telegraph poles and wires, industrial structures.
What attracts you about travel journaling?
I love to sit quietly drawing and collaging until I become part of the scene and everything that goes on around me. Then I don't feel like a tourist with a camera. When journaling, I can pick and choose what I want to include in my book. Later, when I look at these pages back home, I am immediately transported back to that place, the smells, sounds and sights. It's wonderful.
How do you work? What is your teaching style?
We will work the same way as I do in my books by building up layers with inks, gesso, collage papers, a bit of drawing, more collage. This will be a mixture of different views all together to give a wonderful feeling of the place rather than a specific scene.
Why do you do what you do?
I have always used a sketchbook, since I was a child. In my twenties I started to travel and document my travels in my books. They are the first thing I would grab if I had to save my possessions!
Why do students attend your courses?
I think that they enjoy the freedom of the way I work, and the fact that you do not need to be able to draw well. We can make fantastic pages with collage, inks, pens and a bit of drawing. These pages really show the character of the place in an original way.
What is your background?
I went to art college, then went traveling for a few years. I've worked (often in the travel industry) in Greece, Turkey, the Caribbean, Australia. Eventually I settled in New Zealand for a couple of years. When I came back to the UK I taught art at secondary level. There I began making and selling my own work based on my travels. I also ran art and yoga holidays in the South of France and in Italy. Over 10 years ago I found that I just didn't have time to teach in school anymore. I left to pursue my own creative world of collage and sketchbooks.
What have you learned from creating while you travel?
That people are wonderful and always willing to help. A helpful street vendor in India got all the rickshaws to move so that I had a better view, then brought me tea, I wanted to draw the rickshaws!