My name is Karen Stanton and I am a children’s book author/illustrator and artist who started out as an architect. I have a Master’s degree in Architecture from UC Berkeley where I studied under Christopher Alexander (A Pattern Language). A few years(and a few kids)later, I found that I was much happier applying the principles I had learned in my formal education to the design of smaller things that I could make myself, like paintings, illustrated books and art. No education is ever wasted.
I have three published children’s books, and I teach visual design in a public elementary school and “Writing and Illustrating Books for Children” at City College San Francisco. And right now my husband, son and I are remodeling an old apartment building in Valencia, Spain that was built in the year 1849.
My art is multimedia. I use acrylic paint, gouache, India ink, water color, Caran D’ache wax pastels, colored pencil and my favorite part of art making, collage. Since we live part time in Spain, we have done a lot of traveling in Europe and other parts of the world. Wherever I go, I collect paper: a book on the game Go I found in a box on the street in Tokyo, Japan, old notebooks and journals from Paris and Spain, a vintage (and water damaged) “Bobbsey Twins” book I found in a garage sale in Florida, newspapers from Marrakech and 1945 Spain, a math book from Athens, Greece and of course paper I have come across in my hometown of Oakland, California. I make art for the fun of it. Enjoy.