Karina Puente started her journey as a professional artist 10 years ago when she exhibited her work for the first time at age fourteen, and can't remember when art didn't exist in her life.
Surprisingly as a 24 year old woman she has managed to retain the distinct, and enviable, child-like quality of being inspired. She is kin to the creative process and offers insight on inspiration through her teachings and speaking engagements.
A word Puente excitedly uses often is "vision". She considers herself a visionary with innovation to share, always recreating herself and style.
That explains, in part, why she has delved into several media such as oil paint, pastel,installation and illustration by day, only put put them all aside and merge paintings with stained glass sculpture at night.
Puente states that she wants to make art that will inspire, as still images, a movement towards rethinking who we are. "I want to make work that invites people to believe in themselves and the power of imaginative dreaming. There are no barriers to what we can create, no difference in the blood that flows through our veins and art is the universal pulse that can keeps us going."
Puente is currently producing sketches she calls "blueprints for big projects". Preliminary mural designs and rooftop gardens mischievously sparkle in her eyes.
-Leanne Cooper Elliott
Karina Puente's work is available for purchase. Please contact the artist with inquiries. Thank you for loving art.
I collaborate with the Santa Ynez Valley High School Theater Group as an artist offering mask design and ideas.
Here, I created stylized buffalo masks for the play "Indians".
The play is an allegory of the "Wild West", complete with massacre, myth, and remorse.
