In her otherworldly abstract paintings, Karin Galler performs the hardest kind of technical feat: translating learned method into authentic emotion. Working in acrylic on linen, Galler plays with stroke, texture, and color theory to produce works of vibrant contrast and astonishing depth. They are broadly non-representational but overwhelmingly allusive, summoning organic forms of every stripe — the common, iconographic flower, a human body only half-conceived, perhaps a cloud here, perhaps a beast there. These are not explicit objects, but ghosts and hints of real things. The pictures leave the viewer with a head full of echoes.
After working as a nurse for fifteen years in her native Austria, Galler transferred that contemplativeness and attention to detail to her art career. Today her paintings are dense with layered color and unexpected moments. She describes her own personal act of painting as “fascination and passion.” Within these emotions, Galler explains, “the main theme is to show the struggle between darkness and light, the desire to live life to the fullest.”