Kara Maria (born 1968), née Kara Maria Sloat, is a San Francisco-based visual artist known for paintings, works on paper and printmaking.Roth, David M
"The Nature Conundrum,"
''SquareCylinder'', June 2, 2021. Retrieved June 6, 2023.University of California, Berkeley
Kara Sloat (AKA Kara Maria)
Art Practice Faculty. Retrieved June 5, 2023. Her vivid, multi-layered paintings have been described as collages or mash-ups of contemporary art vocabularies, fusing a wide range of abstract mark-making with Pop art strategies of

realism Realism, Realistic, or Realists may refer to: In the arts *Realism (arts), the general attempt to depict subjects truthfully in different forms of the arts Arts movements related to realism include: *Classical Realism *Literary realism, a move ...

, comic-book forms, and appropriation.Desmarais, Charles
"Impact of Jim Hodges, Kara Maria gallery shows impossible to reproduce,"
''San Francisco Chronicle'', March 1, 2018.Retrieved June 5, 2023.Rodriguez, Juan. "Kara Maria at A.O.V.," ''Artweek'', September 2000. Retrieved June 5, 2023.Lallas, Matthew. "Kara Maria’s Abstract World of Endangered Animals," ''The Santa Clara'', February 4, 2022. Her work outwardly conveys a sense of playfulness and humor that gives way to explicit or subtle examinations—sometimes described as "cheerfully apocalyptic"Roth, David M
"Kara Maria @ Catharine Clark,"
''SquareCylinder'', September 24, 2015. Retrieved June 5, 2023.—of issues including

ecological collapse Ecological collapse refers to a situation where an ecosystem suffers a drastic, possibly permanent, reduction in carrying capacity for all organisms, often resulting in mass extinction. Usually, an ecological collapse is precipitated by a disastro ...

, diminishing

biodiversity Biodiversity or biological diversity is the variety and variability of life on Earth. Biodiversity is a measure of variation at the genetic (''genetic variability''), species (''species diversity''), and ecosystem (''ecosystem diversity'') l ...

, military violence and the sexual exploitation of women.Harmanci, Reyhan
"Packard Jennings and Kara Maria at Clark,"
''San Francisco Chronicle'', January 24, 2008. Retrieved June 5, 2023.Granberry, Michael. "As American as sex and war," Dallas Morning News'', August 12, 2012.Recology
"Recology San Francisco Artist in Residence Exhibitions: Work by Kara Maria, Imin Yeh and Matthew Goldberg,"
News, December 16, 2016. Retrieved June 5, 2023.Lindner, Kelly. "The Meaningful Non Sequitur," i
''Kara Maria: Head Over Heels''
Chico, CA: California State University, Chico, 2016. Retrieved June 5, 2023. In a 2021 review, ''Squarecylinder'' critic Jaimie Baron wrote, "Maria’s paintings must be read as satires hatrecognize the absurdities of our era … These pretty, playful paintings are indictments, epitaphs-to-be."Baron, Jaimie
"Jaimie Baron on Kara Maria,"
''SquareCylinder'', April 16, 2022. Retrieved June 5, 2023. Maria has exhibited at venues including the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston,Colpitt, Frances. "Report from Houston: Learning from Comics," ''Art in America'', October 2003.

de Saisset Museum The de Saisset Museum at Santa Clara University opened in 1955, after Isabel de Saisset, the last member of a California pioneer family bequeathed her estate to the University of Santa Clara. The museum owns nearly 10,000 art pieces and historical ...

,Stetson, Grace
"Kara Maria at De Saisset Museum,"
''Metro Silicon Valley'', January 26, 2022. Retrieved June 5, 2023. Nevada Museum of Art,Nevada Museum of Art
"After Audubon: Art, Observation, and Natural Science,"
Exhibitions, 2018. Retrieved June 5, 2023. and Sonoma Valley Museum of Art.Sonoma Valley Museum of Art
"Double Trouble: Enrique Chagoya and Kara Maria,"
Exhibition, 2021. Retrieved June 5, 2023. Her work belongs to the public art collections of the

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF), comprising the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park and the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park, is the largest public arts institution in the city of San Francisco. The permanent collection of the ...

Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA, formerly abbreviated as BAM/PFA) are a combined art museum, repertory movie theater, and archive associated with the University of California, Berkeley. Lawrence Rinder was Director from ...

, and

San Jose Museum of Art The San José Museum of Art (SJMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum in downtown San Jose, downtown San Jose, California, United States. Founded in 1969, the museum holds a permanent collection with an emphasis on West Coast of the United Sta ...

, among others.Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
''Birds of Paradise'', Kara Maria
Artworks. Retrieved June 5, 2023.Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
''Voluptuous Deconstruction'', Kara Maria
Collection. Retrieved June 5, 2023.San Jose Museum of Art
Kara Maria
Objects. Retrieved June 5, 2023. She is married to artist

Enrique Chagoya Enrique Chagoya (born 1953) is a Mexican-born American painter, printmaker, and educator. The subject of his artwork is the changing nature of culture. Chagoya teaches at Stanford University, in the department of Art and Art History. He lives i ...

.Cheng, DeWitt
"Creative in Common at the de Saisset Museum,"
''Metroactive'', October 1, 2014. Retrieved June 5, 2023.

Education and career

Kara Maria Sloat was born in 1968 in

Binghamton, New York Binghamton () is a city in the U.S. state of New York, and serves as the county seat of Broome County. Surrounded by rolling hills, it lies in the state's Southern Tier region near the Pennsylvania border, in a bowl-shaped valley at the conflue ...

.''San Francisco Station''
Kara Maria
Artists. Retrieved June 5, 2023. She moved to San Francisco in 1990 to attend the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

, earning a BA in 1993, followed by an MFA in 1998, both in art practice. After graduating, Maria began to exhibit her work, gaining wider recognition in the early 2000s with appearances in group shows at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston,

Katonah Museum of Art The Katonah Museum of Art is a non-collecting institution geared towards visual arts, located in Katonah, New York, Katonah, New York (state), New York. It does not have a permanent collection, but holds temporary exhibitions. The museum was foun ...

, and Oakland Museum of California, among other venues.Contemporary Arts Museum Houston
"Splat Boom Pow! The Influence of Comics in Contemporary Art,"
Exhibitions. Retrieved June 5, 2023.Baker, Kenneth
"The Last Gasps Of Abstraction,"
''San Francisco Chronicle'', September 2, 2000. Retrieved June 6, 2023.Lindner, Kelly et al
''Kara Maria: Head Over Heels''
Chico, CA: California State University, Chico, 2016. Retrieved June 5, 2023. Following initial solo shows at Patricia Sweetow (San Francisco, 1998) and Cité internationale des arts (Paris, 1999), she began exhibiting at

Catharine Clark Gallery Established in 1991, the Catharine Clark Gallery presents the work of contemporary, living artists using a variety of media. The gallery is located in San Francisco’s Potrero Hill Neighborhood, at 248 Utah Street. The Catharine Clark Gallery is ...

(San Francisco), where she had five solo shows between 2001 and 2018. In her later career, she has had solo exhibitions at Recology (2015), Anglim/Trimble Gallery (2021), Sonoma Valley Museum of Art (2021)Lee, Jackie
"Upheaval and Irreverence—Double Trouble at the SVMA,"
''Sonoma Valley Sun'', October 14, 2021. Retrieved June 5, 2023. and the de Saisset Museum (2022),de Saisset Museum
"Kara Maria - Precious and Precarious: Life on the Edge of Extinction,"
Exhibitions. Retrieved June 5, 2023. as well as two surveys, "Head Over Heels" (2016, California State University, Chico) and "Rhapsody" (2022, Museo Italo Americano).Faraudo, Jeff
"Kara Maria art speaks more than color, style,"
'' Chico Enterprise-Record'', March 5, 2016. Retrieved June 6, 2023.Museo Italo Americano
Kara Maria
Retrieved June 5, 2023. In addition to her artmaking, Maria has taught at California College of the Arts, University of California, Berkeley and

San Francisco State University San Francisco State University (commonly referred to as San Francisco State, SF State and SFSU) is a public research university in San Francisco. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers 118 different b ...

.California College of the Art
Kara Maria
People. Retrieved June 5, 2023.

Work and reception

Maria's art draws on diverse art historical influences—various modes of abstraction, Pop art, Japanese woodblock prints—as well as the formative 1970s pop culture of her youth, including comic books and artistic toys such as

Lite-Brite Lite-Brite is a toy that was originally marketed in 1967. It consists of a light box with small colored plastic pegs that fit into a panel and illuminate to create a lit picture, by either using one of the included templates or creating a "freef ...

, Spirograph and Colorforms. Her work arose in the aftermath of the 1980s and 1990s postmodern ethos of mixing styles—in her case, those of artists

Jackson Pollock Paul Jackson Pollock (; January 28, 1912August 11, 1956) was an American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. He was widely noticed for his " drip technique" of pouring or splashing liquid household paint onto a hor ...

, Ellsworth Kelly,

Roy Lichtenstein Roy Fox Lichtenstein (; October 27, 1923 – September 29, 1997) was an American pop artist. During the 1960s, along with Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, and James Rosenquist among others, he became a leading figure in the new art movement. Hi ...

, Philip Guston,

Gerhard Richter Gerhard Richter (; born 9 February 1932) is a German visual artist. Richter has produced abstract as well as photorealistic paintings, and also photographs and glass pieces. He is widely regarded as one of the most important contemporary German ...

and Sigmar Polke have been cited.Jeno, Heather
"Paradise Lost by Kara Maria,"
''Santa Barbara Independent'', July 5, 2007. Retrieved June 5, 2023. However, writers suggest that unlike postmodern artists, Maria does not use a pastiche of styles ironically or self-referentially, but rather employs them like distinct notes in music—formal tools that are temporally co-existent and equally relevant.LeDuc, Aimee. "Unsolvable Puzzles," i
''Kara Maria: Head Over Heels''
Chico, CA: California State University, Chico, 2016. Retrieved June 5, 2023. Curator Kelly Lindner described Maria's work as a "cacophony of symbols, motifs and painterly gestures" tethered to socio-political concerns by interjections of detailed, realistic imagery. She noted, "Maria's pluralistic approach to abstraction offers a counterpoint to time specificity … a painting style no longer necessarily represents a particular time period."

Work (1998–2013)

Maria's early, largely abstract works were described by ''San Francisco Chronicle'' critic Kenneth Baker as "post-Pop Art" with color field painting titles (e.g., ''Pink/Green'', 1998) that "packed comic-strip explosions and speed lines into otherwise elegant color patterns." With paintings such as ''Boom'' and ''Un Jeu'' (both 1999), she began moving toward more raucous palettes, graphic, cartoon-like representations, and cultural and social commentary. For example, the pink, orange and purple ''Boom'' juxtaposed the title exclamation, bursts and smoke trails with stars inscribed with white line drawings of women's hands and genitals and a phallic lavender missile; ''Un Jeu'' was a multilayered work incorporating a television interruption pattern, looping

arabesque The arabesque is a form of artistic decoration consisting of "surface decorations based on rhythmic linear patterns of scrolling and interlacing foliage, tendrils" or plain lines, often combined with other elements. Another definition is "Foli ...

s, silhouettes of rabbits and pistols, and black dots suggesting either droppings or ammunition pellets. In a different series, Maria—then a vegetarian—depicted cuts of meat based on grocery store flyer imagery, including a deck of nudie cards in which she replaced women's torsos with slabs of meat.Bing, Alison. "The Bigger Picture: Painting and Politics," ''Kitchen Sink'', Summer 2003.''Juxtapoz''
"Kara Maria: Dystopia,"
July 12, 2012. Retrieved June 5, 2023. In subsequent work, presented in the solo exhibitions "Paradise Lost" (2007) and "Dystopia" (2008), she shifted to detailed, realistic renderings of emotionally charged figures and objects that often dominated backdrops featuring assorted abstract and Pop art gestures. These paintings uncomfortably merged war iconography (soldiers, fighter jets, camouflage patterns and references to the Abu Ghraib torture scandal), the palpable flesh of pornography, and consumer culture imagery (e.g., ''Gas Pump'', 2007) to visceral effect. The painting ''Hot and Bothered'' (2007) juxtaposed a decorative mandala alongside pink, purple and white Richter-like squeegee pulls of paint, from under which soldiers bearing weapons and provocatively posed nude women peeked out, creating a candy-coated, even playing field conflating military violence with the sexual exploitation of women. In a review of the "Dystopia" show, the ''San Francisco Chronicles Reyhan Harmanci wrote, "The energy in her paintings is intense: Maria has pushed the meeting of naked women and instruments of war past comfort, and the images can shock." In her exhibitions "Inviting the Storm" (2009) and "Artwarpornica" (2012), Maria expanded upon these themes, introducing concern for the state of the environment into the work.''Sacramento News & Review''
"Chaos on canvas,"
June 11, 2009. Retrieved June 6, 2023.

Environmental and endangered species-related work

In 2014, Maria was an

artist-in-residence Artist-in-residence, or artist residencies, encompass a wide spectrum of artistic programs which involve a collaboration between artists and hosting organisations, institutions, or communities. They are programs which provide artists with space a ...

at Recology—the City of San Francisco dump—where she was challenged to create a body of work using only discarded materials. Scavenging canvases and mass-produced artworks and overpainting them with recycled acrylic paint, she discovered a new theme. She embedded carefully rendered portraits of animals that inhabited or passed through the site (e.g., seagulls, raccoons, hawks) into brightly colored compositions of disjointed, swirling abstract forms that conveyed the constantly churning, tumultuous quality of the facility.Cramer, Laura Jaye. “Kings and queens of the heap," ''SF Weekly'', January 23, 2015. The paintings mixed playfulness with a more somber awareness of neglect, displacement and peril—expressed by seemingly unaware creatures directly gazing out from the canvas—that spoke to the interconnection of humans, animals and habitats through consumption and waste. She extended these works to include a wider range of animals (e.g., primates, rhinos, bats and leopards) and painterly gesture (starburst explosions, spiraling vapor trails, hard-edged quasi-cubist spaces, paint smears and Lichtenstein-like dots and stripes) in the exhibition "Haywire" (2015), which was likened in a review to a pop surrealist requiem over "dystopian resignation."''Sacramento News & Review''
"Emotional electricity,"
February 12, 2015. Retrieved June 6, 2023. In her exhibitions "Post-Nature" (2018), "Regarding Extinction" (2021) and "Precious and Precarious" (2022), these paintings evolved into miniature, Audubon-like depictions of lone endangered-species animals from around the world, in part inspired by

Elizabeth Kolbert Elizabeth Kolbert (born 1961) is an American journalist, author, and visiting fellow at Williams College. She is best known for her Pulitzer Prize-winning book '' The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History'', and as an observer and commentator o ...

’s book '' The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History'' (2014), which detailed a contemporary, projected species loss unequaled since the dinosaur extinction.Roth, David M
"Kara Maria @ Catharine Clark,"
''SquareCylinder'', February 16, 2018. Retrieved June 5, 2023. These creatures were often barely visible amid what David M. Roth described as "gonzo-poetic abstract landscapes—pastiches of

gestural abstraction Action painting, sometimes called "gestural abstraction", is a style of painting in which paint is spontaneously dribbled, splashed or smeared onto the canvas, rather than being carefully applied. The resulting work often emphasizes the physical a ...

, Pop Art, action-comic iconography and natural history rendered in retina-tingling colors— hatare meticulously crafted exercises in well-ordered chaos." Among the species depicted were the polar bear (''Not Fade Away'', 2014), wide-eyed primates (''Mayday (

tarsier Tarsiers ( ) are haplorhine primates of the family Tarsiidae, which is itself the lone extant family within the infraorder Tarsiiformes. Although the group was once more widespread, all of its species living today are found in Maritime Southeast ...

)'', 2017), bees lost among geometric shapes, gestural marks and an assault weapon (''Trump’s Bee'', 2017), and whooping cranes fending off abstract paint smears and SUVs (''An Exercise of Freedom'', 2018). ''The Sea, The Sky, The You And I (Blue Whale)'' (2021) depicted a whale floating on a

tie-dye Tie-dye is a term used to describe a number of resist dyeing techniques and the resulting dyed products of these processes. The process of tie-dye typically consists of folding, twisting, pleating, or crumpling fabric or a garment, before binding ...

-like canvas suggesting the depths of the ocean, but showered with fireworks-like,

Op art Op art, short for optical art, is a style of visual art that uses optical illusions. Op artworks are abstract, with many better-known pieces created in black and white. Typically, they give the viewer the impression of movement, hidden images ...

-ish blue, purple and magenta dots. Writers have noted in these works a clear visual metaphor of restrained versus feral: disarmingly unperturbed animals rendered with great control that serve as calm, still points dominated by and dwarfed within decidedly unnatural, heterogeneous abstract tangles. They suggest that the jolting disparity conveys not only a sense of habitats stripped of all familiar markers—and of the low priority humans place on animals—but also hint at an AI-influenced future of nature under siege and hopelessly degraded. David Roth contended that the scenes of catastrophic disarray made viewers witnesses if not accomplices and "functioned as fire-breathing polemics, arguments against the fiction that life can exist apart from or outside of nature." Jaimie Baron wrote, "Maria’s vibrant works serve as a weirdly joyful and kinetic rendition of this impending animal death, perhaps akin to the second line in a New Orleans jazz funeral."

Collections and awards

Maria's work belongs to the public art collections of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive,The Clark Hulings Foundation
"Kara Maria – Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive."
Retrieved June 5, 2023. Cantor Arts Center,Cantor Arts Center
''Wonderland (Yellow)'', Kara Maria
Objects. Retrieved June 5, 2023.

Crocker Art Museum The Crocker Art Museum is the oldest art museum in the Western United States, located in Sacramento, California. Founded in 1885, the museum holds one of the premier collections of Californian art. The collection includes American works dating f ...

di Rosa di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art is a non-profit art center in Napa, California. di Rosa maintains a collection of approximately 1,600 works of art by Northern California artists including Robert Arneson, Bruce Conner, Jay DeFeo, Tony Labat, an ...

Center for Contemporary Art,di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art
Artist List
Retrieved June 5, 2023. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco,

Mills College Art Museum Mills College Art Museum is a museum and art gallery in Oakland, California. The originally all-girls' school Mills College was founded by Susan and Cyrus Mills, who were both interested in art and history. Susan's sister Jane Tolman was an ar ...

,Mills College Art Museum
'' Divergence #1'', Kara Maria
Objects. Retrieved June 5, 2023. Museo Italo Americano, Nevada Museum of Art, and San Jose Museum of Art, among others.Artadia
Kara Maria, Artadia Awardee
Artists. Retrieved June 5, 2023. She has been awarded residencies at the de Young Museum, Djerassi, Headlands Center for the Arts, Montalvo Arts Center and Recology.Headlands Center for the Arts
Kara Maria
Artists. Retrieved June 5, 2023.Montalvo Arts Center
Kara Maria
Artists. Retrieved June 5, 2023. She has received awards and grants from Artadia (2001),

SF Weekly ''SF Weekly'' was a free alternative weekly newspaper founded in the 1970s in San Francisco, California. It was distributed every Thursday, and was published by the San Francisco Print Media Company. The paper has won national journalism awards, ...

(Masterminds Grant, 2008), and the University of California, Berkeley (Eisner Prize in Art, 1997). In 2020, she was invited as a guest artist for the "Los Angeles Billboard Show" organized by

The Billboard Creative The Billboard Creative is an organization that places art by established and emerging artists from around the world on otherwise empty billboards at major junctions across the city of Los Angeles.

,Davis, Genie
"The Billboard Creative 2020,"
''Art and Cake'', February 27, 2020. Retrieved June 5, 2023.The Billboard Creative
"The Billboard Creative 2020 show includes Marc Dennis and Kara Maria,"
February 2020. Retrieved June 5, 2023. and has been commissioned to create public artworks for

San Francisco General Hospital The Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center (ZSFG) is a Public hospital in San Francisco, California, under the purview of the city's Department of Public Health. It serves as the only Level I Trauma Ce ...

and the

San Francisco Arts Commission The San Francisco Arts Commission (SFAC) is the City agency that champions the arts as essential to daily life by investing in a vibrant arts community, enlivening the urban environment and shaping innovative cultural policy in San Francisco, Cali ...

.Shoulak, Joe
"Gotta Have Heart,'
''San Francisco Chronicle'', May 9, 2004. Retrieved June 5, 2023.San Francisco Arts Commission
Kara Maria
Artist. Retrieved June 5, 2023.Wescover
Kara Maria
Creators. Retrieved June 5, 2023.

Education and career

Work and reception

Work (1998–2013)

Environmental and endangered species-related work

Collections and awards

References

External links