Karen Rae

Karen Rae graduated from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in 1994 with a Bdes(Hons) in Jewellery and Metalwork and now teaches secondary school Art and Design in Angus and Dundee.

Karen specialises in producing the most highly detailed pen and ink drawings, and uses her Design background to maintain a strong sense of balance in each work. The composition of her somewhat illustrative images is always key to the success of the finished work, yet sometimes the image is allowed to develop on the paper without planning, a form of controlled ‘designing’ as the image emerges.

Karen has a very keen interest in timepieces and objects which measure time, particularly astrolabes and planispheres, layering drawn mechanical workings in elaborate and imagined arrangements and embellishing to add further points of interest. She likes to incorporate such things as plant forms, birds and other such creatures to create a visual reference to nature’s relationship with the concept and passing of time.