About artist and teacher Karen Lynn Ingalls
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Karen Lynn Ingalls is a working artist and California credentialed teacher who lives in Calistoga, California, in the Napa Valley.
 Karen Lynn Ingalls, with her painting "Dusk in the Vineyards," just before its completion • photo © Karen Lynn Ingalls Her artwork, including paintings, drawings, collages, and life–sized painted sculptures, have been exhibited, and can be found in collections, on both west and east coasts of the United States, and a few places in between, too.
Just-Spring • acrylics on canvas • © Karen Lynn Ingalls
Karen is mostly known for her brilliantly colored landscape paintings of rural California, which you can see at www.KarenLynnIngalls.com.
Originally a painter and drawer of people, she began painting endangered landscapes — places threatened by development — as she worked with others to save a threatened wetlands area in Monterey County. Mesmerized by the land, its colors, and its spirit, she continues painting colorist landscapes of rural California.
 Karen Lynn Ingalls painting "Sunset Meadow" in her studio near Calistoga • photo © Karen Lynn Ingalls She also draws and paints abstract and mixed media acrylic paintings, and creates block prints, using methods that she enjoys sharing with others in her classes and workshops. Originally a figure painter, she enjoys sketching and drawing people, too.
(You can see more of Karen's artwork at www.karenlynningalls.com. ) |
Karen Lynn Ingalls demonstrates painting upside down for the students of St. Apollinaris School in Napa, California • photo © Sandra Cassayre Moore
Karen has taught art classes, lessons, and art workshops in a variety of subjects to adults and children in Napa Valley, Sonoma County, and other parts of Northern California, in addition to previously teaching high school English classes.
She taught for Napa Valley College Community Education, and currently teaches art classes and workshops for adults and mature teens at the Calistoga Art Center, as well as private, group, and corporate art workshops. 
Painting demonstration for Artists' Round Table of Sonoma County, fall of 2013 — demonstrating the benefits of painting upside down
Karen is frequently described by her students as enthusiastic, inspiring, encouraging, and nonjudgmental.
She is especially good at teaching both the inner game of art – how to tap into your creativity and tame your inner critic – along with the skills, tools, and techniques that help her students make better paintings. 
Karen Lynn Ingalls, guest artist at the Boys & Girls Club • photo © Sharolyn Townsend
Her long-time students are fond of saying, "She's always right!" when it comes to knowing how to create a better, stronger painting.
She believes that making art in the spirit of experimentation and discovery is good for both the soul and the art.
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You can see the art teaching blog Karen kept for her Napa Valley College students at: www.napavalleyartcamp.blogspot.com (there's some great stuff for students there!)
You can also follow Karen on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/KarenLynnIngallsArt
You can also follow Karen on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/KarenLynnIngallsArt
Karen Lynn Ingalls's teaching philosophy
Karen at a young age, painting on the patio, with her father and brother practicing hammer skills in the background.
Every four-year-old is an artist. All too often, somewhere in the process of growing up, people in our culture stop making art. Something happens — a chance remark? an adult's criticism? — and the child decides that she or he must not be an artist, after all.
Learning to create means dipping back into the joys of creation that every four-year-old knows. But creativity isn't only joy. Sometimes it asks of us perseverance and patience, close observation, and the willingness to suspend judgement. That last bit — the willingness — no, the need — to suspend judgement — comes harder when we're grown. Our inner critical voice pops up and tells us that we must be nuts to be painting, that the artwork before us looks like hell, and what were we thinking, anyway?
Sketch after Norman Rockwell's "The Critic" • sketch © 2015 Karen Lynn Ingalls
Learning to suspend criticism and judgement can be tough. But it's absolutely essential in order for creativity to flourish.
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In my classes and workshops, we don't do critiques.
I teach and demonstrate methods, techniques, and things to look for; we look at the examples of other painters; and we practice and try things out in a spirit of experimentation. Then we talk about what the work in front of us needs, just two of us at a time. You get the tools you need to make better paintings; I ask you questions that will help you see what tools you need for the job. 
Painting is, at its best, a dialogue between the painter and the canvas.
At the beginning, the painter has a lot to say, but as the painting progresses, the painter needs to stop, step back, look, and listen, more and more, to learn what it is the painting wants. My intention is to teach my students how to listen more closely – and how to dive in to the heart of the creative process.
That means trusting the process, too. When you trust the process, no matter what, and you listen to the painting, magic happens.
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