Idyll and Crisis at the Re Institute, by Lawre Stone, June 27, 2026. "Known as Iceberg Alley, the waterways of northern Newfoundland and Labrador have attracted many artists, including Hudson River School painter Frederic Edwin Church, who made an expedition to paint icebergs there in 1859. Karen Marston’s Melting Ship speaks to this tradition and brings something new. Painted in situ on an 8-x-10-foot wall just inside the barn’s open door, her iceberg drifts improbably close to the adjacent grassy field. On the day I visited, raking sunlight streaming through the door lit up the piece, linking the iceberg and the Hudson Valley landscape, suggesting climate change and improbably fusing idyll and crisis. In Church’s time, icebergs were considered exotic novelties from distant climes, practically inconsequential. Today, their melting and calving signal environmental disaster. “Seven Women Chase Icebergs” at once affirms the power of artists to gather and ponder and acknowledges nature’s majestic fragility." —Lawre Stone
How to Meet 1,500 Artists in Five Days, Upstate Art Weekend, starting Thursday, brings together New York artists and audiences, and offers everything from icebergs to Arte Povera to keep you cool, by Will Heinrich, June 25, 2026
“...50 miles to the north in Millerton, a painter named Karen Marston was painting an iceberg on the side of a barn: It was time for Upstate Art Weekend again….“Seven Women Chase Icebergs” at the Re Institute in Millerton features climate-focused work by seven female artists who all worked together in Pouch Cove, Newfoundland, including Marston and her ominous blue berg.” —Will Heinrich
Pouch Power Women: with Brenda Zlamany, June 19, 2026, by Yetty Yaniv
"One of the criteria for the show was that everyone exhibit work made in Newfoundland, but Karen had left most of her work there. So I came up with the idea that she should paint a large iceberg mural directly on the barn wall and Henry Klimowicz agreed. I was thrilled when she said yes! She had spent a great deal of time painting icebergs, and approached it with a wonderful energy and confidence.When you enter the barn, you see Karen’s iceberg mural against the bright green of the grass outside. Two landscapes, one image."
Hudson Valley (+Vicinity) Selected Gallery Guide, June 2026, by Karlyn Benson
Photo: The Re Institute: Seven Women Chase Icebergs, Karen Marston installation view
The Re Institute: 1395 Boston Corners Road, Millerton, NY / Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf: James Esber and Jane Fine / May 30 – Jul 12 / Seven Women Chase Icebergs: Daisy Craddock, Gill Ord, Trine Bumiller, Karen Marston, Barbara Friedman, Elisabeth Condon, Brenda Zlamany; Curated by Brenda Zlamany / Artists talk with Jane Fine & James Esber Jun 6, 2 pm ; Two artist-led workshops: plein air painting and exquisite corpse drawing, Jun 27, 1-6 pm
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.