Kara Burrowes

For background on the artist and works, see below.

Current Works

About the Artist

‘Much of my work is intuitive, derived from unconscious thought and a willingness and impulse to experiment.’

The work In Casting Light on Shadows continues with the theme of hiraeth, a prominent thread through Kara Burrowes’ work during her Master of Fine Arts at Canterbury University, completed in March 2023 and awarded Distinction. Seated in nostalgia and an inexplicable longing for ‘home’, Kara works intuitively to express her inner dialogue. Drawn to shadow, reflection, muted, foggy and hazy memory, Kara works to get the feeling translated onto a surface through the use of a variety of media, often unorthodox. Beneath the layers of sublime acrylic paint, scraped back and reworked, are media such as resin or wax, sometimes burned, giving a texture and a sense of something unknown – or unknowable – concealed beneath.

More About the Artist

Kara Burrowes has featured in national and international art awards, notably as a finalist in the Parkin Prize, Molly Morpeth and Wallace Art Awards – flowing on from an early career 1995 award for Landscape Architecture. She lives and works in Christchurch.

She undertook a Masters of Fine Arts (University of Canterbury) in 2022-23, and achieved Distinction on graduating. The return to study took her more intensely back into painting, diverging from her previous mosaic assemblages of found heritage wood, charred and painted. Those processes have flowed through into the new paintings, but are hidden beneath intriguing, subtle and multiple layers of acrylic paint. Just a few of these works are still available, including two at The Diversion 25 Years exhibition.

Kara Burrowes is establishing her place as a distinctive voice in contemporary abstraction, for her unique view, and often unexpected process, and for works that need first hand viewing to fully appreciate their power and subtlety.