Kay Gaul grew up in the big spaces of western Montana. She has a PhD in cultural anthropology and taught anthropology and Sustainability Studies at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, and at Hendrix College in Arkansas. Her research has taken her all over the world, most intensively in India. Kay connected with campus art departments and ceramic studios wherever she taught. She often combined teaching art and social sciences throughout her academic career. She also worked as an anthropologist for the National Park Service in Alaska. She turned to art more intensively over the last several years, studying with a number of teachers in the region.
Karen Kay Gaul (Kay) leans toward realism in her acrylic painting. Her work reflects an interest in forgotten spaces, ruins, edges, and the surfaces of materials as they decay. She is captivated by what builds up and what breaks down over time. Inspiration comes from concrete, graffiti, iron, rust, mold, and other worn-out surfaces. Kay finds these forgotten edges to evoke a sense of lost possibility, misplaced hopes, and forgotten dreams. Her paintings may prompt a sense of both nostalgia and repulsion at the same time. And yet beauty can be found in rusty metal, faded paint, and weather-bent wood. Kay has worked with a variety of teachers, but most intensively with Julie Read in Port Townsend, Washington. She spent many years working in ceramics before she began painting.
