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Detail of Waves Are Coming Home by Karen Gunderson
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Artist Talk: Karen Gunderson

February 5, 2026
6:15 pm–7:15 pm
Free for Members

Join us for the next event in our Artist Talk series, featuring the contemporary American artist Karen Gunderson. Hear from Gunderson as she delves into her practice and talks about her work on view in Looking Forward: New Gifts of Art.

Seating for this event is first come, first served. Artist Talks are included with Museum admission and are free for Members. Admission tickets are available at the door or online.

The Artist Talk series welcomes emerging, mid-career, and established artists to share what it means to live creatively. Discussing motivation, medium, and technique, artists will reveal how and why their work expresses their emotions and ideas

 

Sponsored by
Milwaukee Art Museum’s Contemporary Art Society

 

Image: Karen Gunderson (American, b. 1943), Waves Are Coming Home (detail), 2025. Oil on linen. 75 × 75 in. (190.5 × 190.5 cm). Gift of the artist and Erin Cluley Gallery. Image courtesy of the artist.

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About the artist

Karen Gunderson is known for her striking black paintings that transform the traditional use of black pigment into luminous, textured imagery. Working exclusively with black paint since the late 1980s, she has developed a distinctive technique that uses subtle brushwork and layering to create works that shift with light and viewer movement. Her subjects range from landscapes and water to portraits and celestial forms. Gunderson holds an MFA in Intermedia from the University of Iowa—the first awarded in the U.S.—and spent much of her career in New York City, exhibiting with Fischbach Gallery and connecting with artists like Sol LeWitt and Elaine de Kooning. She has shown internationally, with solo exhibitions at the Racine Art Museum, National Museum of Bahrain, and in Madrid. A recipient of the 2020 Anonymous Was A Woman Award, Gunderson’s work is held in the collections of the MFA Houston, Milwaukee Art Museum, and others.