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: *American Realism *Classical Realism *Liter ...

, 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 An ecosystem, short for ecological systems theory, system, is defined as a collection of interacting Organism, organisms within a biophysical environment. Ecosystems are never static, and are continually subject to both stabilizing and destabiliz ...

, diminishing

biodiversity Biodiversity is the variability of life, life on Earth. It can be measured on various levels. There is for example genetic variability, species diversity, ecosystem diversity and Phylogenetics, phylogenetic diversity. Diversity is not distribut ...

, 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

hat A hat is a Headgear, head covering which is worn for various reasons, including protection against weather conditions, ceremonial reasons such as university graduation, religious reasons, safety, or as a fashion accessory. Hats which incorpor ...

recognize 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 Contemporary Arts Museum Houston is a not-for-profit institution in the Museum District, Houston, Texas, founded in 1948, dedicated to presenting contemporary art to the public. As a non-collecting museum, it strives to provide a forum for visua ...

,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 historic ...

,Stetson, Grace
"Kara Maria at De Saisset Museum,"
''Metro Silicon Valley'', January 26, 2022. Retrieved June 5, 2023.

Nevada Museum of Art The Nevada Museum of Art, is an art museum in Reno, Nevada. Located at 160 West Liberty Street in Reno, it is the only American Alliance of Museums (AAM) accredited art museum in the state of Nevada. The museum has chosen a thematic approach, pl ...

,Nevada Museum of Art
"After Audubon: Art, Observation, and Natural Science,"
Exhibitions, 2018. Retrieved June 5, 2023. and

Sonoma Valley Museum of Art The Sonoma Valley Museum of Art (known colloquially as the SVMA) is an art museum located in Sonoma, California, United States. Founded in 1998, the museum exhibits works by regional, national and international modern and contemporary artists. H ...

.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. FAMSF's combined attendance was 1,1 ...

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 film archive associated with the University of California, Berkeley. Lawrence Rinder was Director ...

, and

San Jose Museum of Art The San José Museum of Art (SJMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum in downtown San Jose, California, United States. Founded in 1969, the museum holds a permanent collection with an emphasis on West Coast artists of the 20th and 21st cent ...

, 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. He frequently uses shocking imagery, irony, and Mesoamerican icons to convey his point in his a ...

.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 c ...

.''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 university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

, 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. It does not have a permanent collection, but holds temporary exhibitions. The museum was founded in 1953, in one room at the loc ...

, and

Oakland Museum of California Oakland is a city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area in the U.S. state of California. It is the county seat and most populous city in Alameda County, California, Alameda County, with a population of 440,646 in 2020. A major We ...

, 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 The Cité internationale des arts is an artist-in-residence building complex which accommodates artists of all specialities and nationalities in Paris. It comprises two sites, one located in the Marais and the other in Montmartre. Approximately ...

(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 i ...

(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 California State University, Chico (Chico State) is a public university in Chico, California. It was founded in 1887 as one of about 180 "normal schools" founded by state governments in the 19th century to train teachers for the rapidly growing ...

) 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 The California College of the Arts (CCA) is a private art school in San Francisco, California. It was founded in Berkeley, California in 1907 and moved to a historic estate in Oakland, California in 1922. In 1996, it opened a second campus in ...

, University of California, Berkeley and

San Francisco State University San Francisco State University (San Francisco State, SF State and SFSU) is a Public university, public research university in San Francisco, California, United States. It was established in 1899 as the San Francisco State Normal School and is ...

.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 Spirograph is a geometric drawing device that produces mathematical roulette curves of the variety technically known as hypotrochoids and epitrochoids. The well-known toy version was developed by British engineer Denys Fisher and first sold in ...

and

Colorforms Colorforms is a creative toy named for the simple shapes and forms cut from colored vinyl sheeting that cling to a smooth backing surface without adhesives. These pieces are used to create picture graphics and designs, which can then be changed c ...

. 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. A major figure in the abstract expressionist movement, Pollock was widely noticed for his "Drip painting, drip technique" of pouring or splashing liquid household ...

Ellsworth Kelly Ellsworth Kelly (May 31, 1923 – December 27, 2015) was an American painter, sculptor, and printmaker associated with hard-edge painting, Color field painting and minimalism. His works demonstrate unassuming techniques emphasizing line, col ...

Roy Lichtenstein Roy Fox Lichtenstein ( ; October27, 1923September29, 1997) was an American pop artist. He rose to prominence in the 1960s through pieces which were inspired by popular advertising and the comic book style. Much of his work explores the relations ...

Philip Guston Philip Guston (born Phillip Goldstein, June 27, 1913 – June 7, 1980) was a Canadian American painter, printmaker, muralist and draftsman. "Guston worked in a number of artistic modes, from Renaissance-inspired figuration to formally accomplis ...

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

and

Sigmar Polke Sigmar Polke (13 February 1941 – 10 June 2010) was a German painter and photographer. Polke experimented with a wide range of styles, subject matters and materials. In the 1970s, he concentrated on photography, returning to paint in the 1980s, ...

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 "Foliate ...

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 (also Writer-in-residence), or artist residencies, encompass a wide spectrum of artistic programs that involve a collaboration between artists and hosting organisations, institutions, or communities. They are programs that pr ...

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 Surrealism is an art movement, art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike s ...

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 July 6, 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 com ...

’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—

are 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 the lone extant family within the infraorder Tarsiiformes. Although the group was prehistorically more globally widespread, all of the existing species are restricted to M ...

)'', 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 distorted or manipulated geometrical patterns, often to create optical illusions. It began in the early 20th century, and was especially popular from the 1960s on, the term "Op ...

-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 (officially Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, previously the Stanford University Museum of Art) is an art museum on the campus of Stanford University in Stanford, California, United State ...

,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 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
'' Divergence #1'', Kara Maria
Objects. Retrieved June 5, 2023. Museo Italo Americano,

, 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 The de Young Museum, formally the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, is a fine arts museum located in San Francisco, California, named for early San Francisco newspaperman M. H. de Young. Located on the West Side (San Francisco), West Side of the ci ...

, Djerassi,

Headlands Center for the Arts Headlands Center for the Arts hosts an internationally recognized artist-in-residence program, and interdisciplinary public programs. It is situated in a campus of artist-renovated military buildings in the Marin Headlands, in Marin County, Cali ...

Montalvo Arts Center The Montalvo Arts Center is a non-profit center for the arts in Saratoga, California, United States. Open to the public, Montalvo comprises a cultural and arts center, a park, hiking trails and the historic Villa Montalvo, an Italian Mediterran ...

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'' is an online music publication and formerly 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 ha ...

(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,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 c ...

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, Cal ...

.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