Karen Oremus

Karen Oremus was born in Montreal, Canada. She has worked as an artist, curator, and educator internationally in Australia, Canada, the United States, Italy, England, Germany, China, Estonia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Japan, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and the Middle East. She received her B.F.A. in Printmaking with a minor in Roman Archaeology at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. She studied Painting and Printmaking at the Academia di Belli Arte di Roma (Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, Italy) and completed her archaeological field school at the University of Warwick in Coventry, England. Karen graduated with an M.F.A. in Printmaking from the Tyler School of Art of Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Oremus worked for fifteen years as an Associate Professor in the College of Arts and Creative Enterprises at Zayed University in the United Arab Emirates, where she was responsible for the establishment and development of the first printmaking studio and printmaking discipline in the nation's capital on the Abu Dhabi campus and contributed to the establishment of the College in her tenure as Assistant Dean. Karen joined Winthrop University in August 2018 as Chair of the Department of Fine Arts in the College of Visual and Performing Arts.

Karen Oremus is an artist who merges traditional printmaking with new technologies. Through her creative research Karen explores the unpredictability and fragility of life from both a universal and personal perspective. This is emphasized through her examination of the concept of physical and environmental decay brought about by the passage of time. Place, family, heritage, memory and history also motivate her work. She deals with issues such as war, illness, human metamorphosis, and both natural and man-made disaster and death. The aforementioned concepts are expressed metaphorically in a variety of manifestations, which are created through a hybrid of traditional and non-traditional printmaking techniques, mainly utilizing etching, screen-printing, digital print and photography and drawing, that incorporate various other media such as printed embroidery, animation, video and laser cutting and engraving technology.

Karen Oremus recently exhibited her work in a solo show at the Museum of Seljackih Buna in Croatia and participated in collective exhibitions at the Xi'an Art Museum in China, and the Kyoto Art Museum in Japan. Oremus is the recipient of the Guanlan Print Prize at the 2017 Guanlan Printmaking Biennial, in Shenzhen, China.