The Artist Among Us

Some people experience the world through creation and Karen Riomondo is one of them. Our customers who know her probably worked with her to implement their system setups as their Business Analyst and Project Manager.

Karen shared that she paints for "pretty much one reason," namely because she finds it "very soothing and relaxing." Referring to painting as a "guilty pleasure", Karen finds herself able to shut the world out and take time for herself with a paintbrush in her hand. 

The isolation of COVID gave her the opportunity to revisit the hobby and since then, she's created many works of art. You will find a selection of pieces in the slides below. Nearly all of Karen's art is given away to family and friends because she finds the joy in creating the art and sharing it with her favorite people.

Most recently, she has enjoyed painting 6" X 6" canvases of single flowers, two examples of which you can see below. Lately, she has taken to painting the smaller canvases because she gets her painting fix but can knock out a completed painting in a couple hours.

"All of my degrees are in the fine arts. Art feeds the soul but it does not pay the rent."

Those who know Karen appreciate her relentless organization, meticulous nature and task-oriented work ethic, but she has the heart of an artist and embraces the messy, subjective world of acrylic paint. This passion for creation gives her life a necessary balance and the kind of depth of character we are drawn to as a corporate culture. 

I started Demic (work in progress sunflower mural) near the beginning of Covid lockdowns. I needed a big project to help keep my mind off all that was going on in the world. I chose sunflowers because it reminded me of my grandmother but really the subject didn't matter because I was going to cut it up anyway. The piece represents the Covid pandemic to me - Covid took what was beautiful and normal and ordered and turned it upside down and switched it all up but you could still see the original pieces of life and recognize them for what they once were. For me everything was still there, it was just in a different place or worked differently. I tried to represent that. Originally I was titling it Pandemic but chose the root word (meaning "of a people") because it seemed like the Covid pandemic in the United States was unique and included so much political upheaval.

Yellow rose is part one of two. The blue rose is in progress.

 

Stargazer Lily was a gift for my mother, it's her favorite flower. 

 

Reflections is a photocopy of a drawing I made for my grandfather when I got my undergraduate degree. He had helped support me throughout college and I wanted to thank him. It hung over his desk until he died.

 

The scrim design is from one of my set designs. This is the design that I gave to the set painter. The Earth was the entire backdrop of the set, about 30 feet wide. The color swatches were to be used by the set painter to create her paint palette. She painted the drop on the floor of our scene shop because it was so large. 

 

The design plate is from one of my set designs (my focus for my undergraduate degree). This is the ground plan which is the main design plate because it shows where all of the set pieces are placed, where the audience sits and where the director will block the actors' movement during the play. This was all hand drawn, my school didn't have computer assisted drawing at that time. Even though I used a ruler to draw these lines and to write the letters I am really good at drawing straight lines without a ruler to this day.