Karen Mason is an artist whose Italian heritage and influence of Asian design become evident in her paintings. In her work she combines the radiant passion of color with the tranquility of understated lines. The embracing environments of her large-scale paintings communicate the moment when you find yourself face to face with brilliant tropical flowers in a bamboo-like forest, or among melodious birches as the ground warms in the afternoon. Her painting gives a unique contemporary flair, which is achieved though the application of thickly painted saturated oil colors over thin layers of acrylic glaze and collage. In this way she balances bold perspective and color with a translucency that evokes tranquility and space. Mason currently lives in Berkeley, California where she can usually be found painting in her garden studio or in the hills working plein air.