Kari Breitigam is a Houston-based artist and designer. Her paintings often feature cut flowers, animals, and simple still life arrangements, all subjects inspired by home and the beauty found in daily routines. In addition to her fine art, Kari creates limited-edition jewelry and accessories that explore the use of fiber and metal. Kari’s jewelry designs embody the same principles as her paintings. Visible textures, simplified forms, and organic shapes play integral roles in every design, accentuating evidence of the human touch. She is also a co-founder of Pretti.Cool, a design company that creates functional and beautiful products for the home. Kari received a BFA in Painting and Drawing from the Ohio State University and an MFA in Painting from Indiana State University. Kari has been a Professor of Art at Lone Star College in Houston, Texas, since 2012.
Statement
I am drawn to rather traditional subject matter for its universality. Many of my paintings feature cut flowers, animals, and simple still life arrangements - all subjects inspired by home and the beauty found in daily routines.
The significance of my work, however, isn’t necessarily in what is being depicted, but rather how it is depicted. Visible textures, simplified forms, and organic shapes play integral roles in all my work and accentuate evidence of the human touch. An organic approach to minimalism is at the core of my practice. I am interested in bringing warmth to a minimalist aesthetic. “Minimalism” is a term so often associated with being cold and impersonal; however, I find that reducing a subject to its essence is akin to filtering out the excess noise of daily life. The subdued colors, curvature of contours, and simplification of form work together to create a visual calm, a means to quiet the mind. I want my paintings to provide a sense of stillness, tranquility, and order when our world feels anything but.