Karen Stone

I remember as a child hiding in the dark behind my grandmother’s floral lounge watching the flowers ‘bloom’ as a ray of light from the doorway would ‘wake them up’.    

I like flowers, they delight me. Growing up, flowers were everywhere in my family homes, an ever-present part of my family upbringing. On the walls, the curtains, the upholstery, the carpets, summer dresses, aprons, tea-towels, flowers have become portals for generating stories and memories of significant moments of living.
 
The fragrance of roses transports me to my mother’s kitchen … The pattern on a tablecloth brings memories of my grandmother having afternoon tea ….   

My work is a visual exploration of these personal memories and feelings of home through the translation of floral patterns into pulp paintings, where flowers now act as a metaphor for the familial conditioning of myself, a female child born in Australia in the 1950s.  

The pulp paintings, a synthesis of painting and papermaking, are made with fibres from recycled cotton and linen clothing. I search charity shops to find items which have been donated, full of memories and stories of the people who once owned them. I then transform these shirts, skirts, blouses and sheets through the act of pulping and my art making process into art works expressive of my story of home.  

Installed as pulp paintings, these flattened blossoms challenge me to feel and engage in more emotional interpretations of my floral memories: to self-reflect and become more aware of my patterns of behaviour, my values and my place in the world.  



In 2022 Karen Stone was awarded a Master of Visual Art Research by Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, Qld