About the Artist

 

Karen Kaupanger developed her appreciation of the natural world at an early age. She grew up in the Sierra Nevada mountain range of California where a day’s play meant wandering in redwood forests and collecting rocks on the beach.

 

She took her first photography class at San Jose City College. After moving to the Midwest, she continued her photography and art on a part-time basis while raising a son, Keefe, and establishing her own business in Therapeutic Massage and Touch for Health. To nourish her creative urges, Kaupanger has participated in the Nikon Workshop Series and taken classes in painting from several instructors.

 

As a result of her travels to National Parks, Kaupanger has begun to focus on the natural beauty of the flora and fauna of the American continent. Her work in this series concentrates on the southwest - Taos, New Mexico, the Great Sand Dunes National Park, the Grand Canyon - and the North Shore of Minnesota.

 

Kaupanger has the talent to find beauty in unexpected places such as the North Platte River valley near Kearney, Nebraska, which annually hosts the migration of hundreds of thousands of majestic Sand Hill Cranes. Nearer her home, in Columbia, Missouri, she finds beauty in her magnificent garden of hemerocallis and roses.