Karen Masters has been a mixed-media artist for over 40 years working mainly in textiles, print and photography. She trained in textiles and art therapy and since retiring as a lecturer she has been creating specialised therapeutic environments for the NHS.
This exhibition is the culmination of four years of research. At the start of lockdown in March 2020 Karen decided to remove one of the suitcases that had sat in her attic since she and her brother cleared out their parent’s home. The case held over 1000 photographs and pieces of paper. Among the papers, she found a small envelope with a handwritten family tree created by her paternal great-aunt Helen Livingston Potts.
This started a journey not only in research finding hundreds of ancestors and their stories that had been lost in time but also in developing her sculptural skills in ceramics.
Stories of journeys, poverty, power, tenacity, and the quite bizarre.
The ceramic shoes and sculptures have been created to illustrate a particular event or time in their lives, portraits of individual family members dating from the mid-20th century back to our common European ancestors of 1000 years ago.
Karen Masters Exhibition will be held in Dunfermline Carnegie Library and Galleries in their Community Gallery space on the ground floor.
The exhibition opens to the public on the 7th of July and you can follow her Instagram journey over here – @walkingthroughmydna
1-7 Abbot Street
Dunfermline
KY12 7NL
01383 602365
