Karen Hollingsworth began painting wildlife and portraits and then scenes of open windows and billowing curtains. “I love to create paintings that evoke a sense of the familiar,” she says. For her next exhibition at Principle Gallery in Charleston, South Carolina, the familiar includes paper bags, comfortably worn suitcases and a violin.
She and her husband, James Neil Hollingsworth, are always “on the prowl for interesting objects” and often find objects on eBay—she looks for pieces with texture and he looks for the shinier precision-made pieces. “Every once in a while I’ll steal one of his props,” she admits.
Her familiar objects are accompanied by living things—ladybugs, grasshoppers, birds, chipmunks, lizards. “My sister has a huge array of birdfeeders,” she says, “and my brother in law is a photographer, so…
