Aaron Karp’s large format abstract paintings are dazzling chromatic essays. One critic called them “visual jazz.” Using tape to layer paint in geometric and organic shapes, Karp creates imaginative landscapes in an array of colors with fractal-like effects. Layering is a consistent element of most of his work; Karp has explained: “Layering itself, I believe makes up the central metaphor in my work, both literally and figuratively. The process involved in making the paintings is intimately connected to their meaning. The work is about concealing and revealing. It is about the fracturing of color and space, about looking at and into something to extract information and meaning.”
Karp was born in Altoona, Pennsylvania. In 1969 he obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree from Buffalo State University in New York, and four years later a Master of Fine Arts degree from Indiana University in Bloomington. Between 1977 and 1979 he was gallery director at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, where he also taught color and design fundamentals. He moved to Albuquerque in 1979, where he became assistant professor at the University of New Mexico until 1984, after which he retired so that he could paint full time.
Over the years, Karp has held many prestigious residencies, including one in Roswell, New Mexico; at the Anderson Ranch Art Center in Snowmass, Colorado; the MacDowell Colony, in Peterborough, New Hampshire; the Julia and David White Artists’ Colony in Costa Rica; Fundación Valparaiso in Spain, and others in California, Virginia, Maine, Nebraska, and China. In addition to his multiple residencies, Karp has been the recipient of numerous awards, including a 2001 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant.