ARTIST BIO

Karen Santos is a Winnipeg, Manitoba-based Mexican artist who has been devoted to the arts and to painting since she was four years old. She began her artistic training at an early age under the close tutelage of her mother, an avid painter, art teacher, and art psychologist herself. Karen continued her studies with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Visual Arts from the University of British Columbia. She subsequently completed a Bachelor of Music in Opera Performance at the Vancouver Academy of Music, and a Masters of Music at the Desautels Faculty of Music, University of Manitoba.

One of Karen’s most recent exhibition combined visual arts with her passion for opera. During her recent performance of the one-act, one-woman opera ‘At the Statue of Venus’ by Jake Heggie, Karen created all of the set’s art pieces, including a life-size statue and six paintings, to set the stage of an art gallery.

Karen's work is inspired by the relationship between art, music, and psychology. Working mostly with wax and oil, she creates abstract expressionist portraits of the music as an alternate means of conveying the music itself. As shown in ‘At the Statue of Venus’, Karen has married both forms of art in new and groundbreaking ways, demonstrating that only someone with her incredible tenacity is able to understand both disciplines so intimately and join them so eloquently. 

She has participated in various art exhibitions in the Winnipeg Area and the Greater Vancouver Area, and has also sold works internationally, including in Mexico, the United States, and Australia.