Flowing a Force of Nature, Vital Force: Water Essential at Front Room Gallery,
Review by Linda DiGusta, January 2020
"Human interventions, for better but mostly worse, occupy several works. An impactful presence, Karen Marston’s large scale painting, “Decomposition,” depicts a decomposing coral formation embraced by a vivid blue aura, the beauty captures us before the grief of realizing that this has been killed." —Linda DiGusta
Karen Marston: Harbingers
Week at a Glance, Pick, April 21, 2018
"Karen Marston is no stranger to the themes of crisis and menace as manifest in nature, usually confronting ecological disaster head on in images of forest fires or volcanic eruptions. In these portraits of icebergs she slows down the action without any attendant loss of the sublime, capturing the precarious majesty of these eerily beautiful forms in paintings charged with ominous chill." –David Cohen
See My Friends by Stephanie Theodore, January, 2016
Nightblaze, by Karen Marston pictured in this Owen James Gallery feature piece, a new column—sharing information about young/small/hungry/idealistic galleries doing ambitious and interesting things...
Karen Marston, Storm Watch, by Michael Wilson, September 6-12, 2012
"In Alien Green, a branch protrudes like a grasping hand from a toxic-looking pool, while Fallen Tree records, on an 18-by-14 inch panel, the tangled aftermath of some unidentified meteorological havoc. There's an ambiguity to such scenes—and a spontaneity to their depiction—that raises questions about nature, catastrophe, humanity and the sublime..." —Michael Wilson
Karen Marston: To Embrace The Whole Sky With The Mind
Week at a Glance, Art Critical Pick, June 3, 2017
"The artist writes: 'Totum animo comprendere caelum' is inscribed on the exterior of the National Weather Center at the University of Oklahoma...'To embrace the whole sky with the mind'. The poetic motto of these scientists captures my desire as an artist to paint the magnitude of the sky..."
Events Listings—Editor's Picks, August, 2012
"Marston's oil paintings on canvas and panel that fill the gallery's front room feature forms of terra firms in variable flux, from hilltops ablaze in brush fires to fields cowering beneath tornadoes and cumulous menace."
Art Critical Pick: Karen Marston in Montrose at The Front Room, December, 2011
"Marston's painful yet alluring disaster paintings are keyed, picture perfect, to Edmund Bruke's definition of the sublime." —David Cohen
Critic's Notebook, by Christine Emba, January 12, 2015
Karen Marston, Wave with Traffic Light Study, 2013, featured image
Pleasure All Over the Place: Paperazzi by Paul D'Agostino, January 30, 2013
Karen Marston's Crashing Wave mentioned in a review of Paperazzi 2 at Janet Kurnatowski Gallery.