About the Artist
Hello there.
I'm Kara and I have a split-brain personality.
You see, my mother was an art teacher, my father an attorney, and I’m basically split right down the middle. I mention this, because my work explores the dichotomy of creativity and analytics, of intuition and intention. My art practice is also inextricably linked to my own story.
I tell the tales women are taught to hide. Frustrations and insecurities....resentments and vulnerabilities...obsessions and inequities...my gestural, mixed media paintings juxtapose vivid personal narrative with provocative feminist themes.
My art practice challenges conventional notions of femininity with large scale, aggressive gestures and confrontational messaging. In layering traditional painting materials with up-cycled ephemera such as children’s artwork, delivery packages, and dress patterns, I deconstruct domesticity while reassembling my own definition of womanhood. A flurry of emotion and intention, my work illuminates the impossible mix of optimism and despair defining femininity today.
ARTIST BIO
Kara Greenwell is a California-based visual artist whose abstract, mixed-media paintings excavate the emotional and social forces shaping women’s lives. Working in a physically driven, gestural language, she builds and breaks images through layers of paint, up-cycled ephemera, and domestic fragments, collapsing the boundaries between personal narrative and cultural script. These worn and discarded materials carry the weight of care, labor, and memory, destabilizing inherited ideas of femininity and exposing what is often kept invisible.
A self-taught artist, Kara brings a perspective shaped in part by her MBA from Harvard Business School, where she began thinking deeply about value, power, and exchange. That analytical training now rubs productively against a deeply intuitive studio practice. The friction between analysis and instinct, between control and excess, drives her process of accumulation, erasure, and reconstruction. Ms. Greenwell’s work has been exhibited at Torrance Art Museum, Oceanside Museum of Art, and Cape Cod Museum of Art. She has attended residencies at Vermont Studio Center, Cuttyhunk Island Artists’ Residency, and ChaNorth.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2024 Seen But Not Heard, F1VE Art Gallery, San Diego, CA
2023 Backwards and in High Heels, Harvard Business School, Boston, MA
MUSEUM EXHIBITIONS
2026 Visual Voice: Freedom to Create, Cape Cod Museum of Art, Dennis, MA
2025 Nomad IV, Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA
Artist Alliance Biennial, Oceanside Museum of Art, Oceanside, CA
ColorStraction, Sasse Museum of Art, Pomona, CA
2024 International Spring Exhibition, The San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, CA
62nd Stockton Art League Juried Exhibition, Haggin Museum, Stockton, CA
2023 International Spring Exhibition, The San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, CA
2022 Artist Alliance Biennial, Oceanside Museum of Art, Oceanside, CA
SITE-SPECIFIC INSTALLATIONS
2026 Womb Room, Hospital of Emotions, Los Angelas, CA (forthcoming May 2026)
2024 Coming Unraveled, F1VE Art Gallery, San Diego CA
2023 Life on the Line, Studio Narrative, San Diego, CA
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2026
Belonging, University of North Carolina Pembroke A.D. Gallery, Pembroke, NC
The Human Body, Losnotrequired, La Jolla, CA
2026 Abstract National Exhibition, Mark Arts, Witchita, KS
Centered on the Center, Huntington Beach Art Center, Huntington Beach, CA
2025
3-Woman Show, Inheritance: Women’s Stories, Maude Kerns Art Center, Eugene, OR
Highlights and Shadows, Raud Fine Art Gallery, Chicago, IL
Intergalactic Open, Shockboxx Gallery, Hermosa Beach, CA
Dames on Grand, Escondido Arts Partnership, Escondido, CA
2024
This is the Future of Non-Objective Art, Atlantic Gallery, New York, NY
62nd Stockton Art League Juried Exhibition, Haggin Museum, Stockton, CA
Women Artists Making Their Mark, O'Hanlon Center for the Arts, Mill Valley, CA
International Spring Exhibition, The San Diego Museum of Art Artists Guild, San Diego, CA
Urban Expression, Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, Santa Ana, CA
Girl Power, HMVC Gallery, New York, NY
Ladies Night, Covet Art Gallery, Oceanside, CA
2023
15th Annual Juried Show, Prince Street Gallery, New York, NY
Time and Beauty, ChaShaMa, New York, NY
California Dreamin', Dorado 806 Project, Santa Monica, CA
10th Annual Living Mark, Verum Ultimum, Portland, OR
Un-Loveable, Shockboxx Gallery, Hermosa Beach, CA
4 Square, Ashton Gallery, San Diego, CA
International Spring Exhibition, The San Diego Museum of Art Artists Guild, San Diego, CA
2022
Artist Alliance Biennial, Oceanside Museum of Art, Oceanside, CA
Made in the USA, TAG Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
International Exhibition, The San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, CA
Humanity, Art Fluent, Boston, MA
Reflections, California Arts League, Los Angeles, CA
Lipstick & Rouge, Ashton Gallery, San Diego, CA
Your True Colors, Escondido Municipal Gallery, Escondido, CA
2021
Drawn to Paper, Atlantic Gallery, New York, NY
23rd Annual Rio Brazos Juried Exhibition, Tarleton State University, Granbury, TX
Artist’s Vision 2021, Marin Society of Artists, San Rafael, CA
SoCal's Best Upstarts and Innovators, Escondido Municipal Gallery, Escondido, CA
Pure Paint, Arts Benicia, Benicia, CA
An Exhibition of Things Called Art, Hilliard Gallery, Kansas City, MO
2020
International Exhibition, The San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, CA
Another Moment in Time, The Old Town Arts & Crafts Guild, Cutchogue, NY
LA Open Exhibition, TAG Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
CCAN 2020, The Center for Contemporary Arts, Abilene, TX
Open International, International Society of Acrylic Painters, Santa Cruz, CA
PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS & SERVICE
Arts & Culture Funding Review Advisory Panel, Commission for Arts & Culture, San Diego, CA
Public Art Selection Panel, Commission for Arts & Culture, San Diego, CA
Grant TK-8 Great Artists Student Art Exhibition Director, San Diego, CA
California Arts League, Los Angeles, CA
RESIDENCIES
2024 Cuttyhunk Island Artists’ Residency, Cuttyhunk, MA
2023 Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT
2022 ChaNorth, Pine Plains, NY
PRESS & AWARDS
Dixon/Ticonderoga Award, San Diego Watercolor Society 45th International Exhibition, 2025 2024 Rising Star in the Arts Finalist, San Diego Magazine
“Windblown Paint,” Cate McQuaid, Ocean in a Drop, September 10, 2024
“Daily Inspiration: Meet Kara Greenwell,” SD Voyager, May 13, 2024
“Editor’s Pick,” KPBS Arts Calendar, February 2, 2024
1st Place, Lipstick & Rouge, Ashton Gallery, 2022
“Family Matters,” Livestream Artist Panel with Teresia Bush, January 14, 2022
3rd Place, Upstarts and Innovators, Escondido Municipal Gallery, 2021
Best in Show, Quarantine Aquamarine, Ashton Gallery, San Diego, CA, 2020
PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS & SERVICE
Arts & Culture Funding Review Advisory Panel, Commission for Arts & Culture, San Diego, CA
Public Art Selection Panel, Commission for Arts & Culture, San Diego, CA
Grant TK-8 Great Artists Student Art Exhibition Director, San Diego, CA
California Arts League, Los Angeles, CA
Artist Alliance, Oceanside, CA
EDUCATION
2008 MBA, Harvard Business School, Boston, MA
2000 BA, cum laude, Miami University, Oxford, OH
