Karen Hochman Brown Creates Visionary Art

Posted on by Diversions LA

Whether working in video, on fabric, or with a photographic palette, Karen Hochman Brown is an artistic visionary.  Her work is often hypnotic, using energetic forms and lush digital constructs. Mixing line, shape, and movement, whether she is working in time-based video or with fabric hangings that feature overstitching, her work evokes sensations of mystery and magnetism, pulling the viewer into a compelling vortex of color, motion, light, and texture.

The artist attests that she is in inspired by the work of artists such as Hilma auf Klimp, Victor Vasserely, Agnes Pelton, and Ruth Asawa as well as artists specializing in Geometric Abstraction. “Specifically for my Threads projects, I am inspired by my the women in my family who turned yarn and thread into physical creations. Starting with my great-grandmother who worked with embroidery and crochet as a trade in the early 1900s in New York City, I remember being most intrigued by the crochet work which is constructed of small thread mandalas placed in grid patterns to create larger patterns. The work was meticulous and intricate. That has carried over into my love of the geometric form. But all the women in my life (including me growing up) worked with thread one way or another, whether through sewing, crocheting, weaving, knitting, embroidery, crewel work or more.”

She explains that her work is constantly evolving “even as I circle back to older work to make it new and exciting.” She relates that she “started out as a serious artist making custom tallit (Jewish Prayer Shawls) using digitally created designs, mainly fractal work, with the designs printed on silk and fine tailoring finish work.”

That work grew as the software she was working with improved, and she began to incorporate photographs into the digital process. This led to “ten years making kaleidoscopic mandalas from [what were primarily] photographs of flowers. All the while I was developing an arsenal of virtual paint brushes designed to mimic thread-work using a different software.”

According to Hochman Brown, that is what is on view in her current work, as well as a transition from work that she made twenty years ago currently being “reborn.”

What has changed the most for her over time is her growth from doing work for herself to putting that work out into the world in galleries, transitioning from craft into art.

She notes that she is “first and foremost a digital artist. I love to get lost inside the swiftness of the computer as well as the ability to create many versions and curate down to the best versions. I love the logic of digital work. There is something about digital work, at least for me, that verges on collaboration. My work is nothing without the programers who built the software I use,” she stresses. “As their code grows, my capabilities grow as well. But it is hard to exhibit digital work in a 3D world. So I return to working with thread to bring new forms to life.”

Her current exhibition, on view now through May 30th at Diversions Fine Arts in Manhattan Beach is a body of work that she created in only a few months time. After this impressive feat, she is taking time to “learn how to use Mid-Journey or some other AI visual program to transform my artwork to a different level. I have seen some of my fellow LA artists using AI programs to advance their artwork in spectacular new ways. This is not making your dog look like a Picasso, but a workspace that only references my own work, transforming it in ways I have yet to imagine.”

What she most wants our readers to know about her work is the “links between the early garment industry and computers. The first computers were looms that used punchcards to control the heddles to create intricate jacquard patterns and brocades. I want them to see the threads between them, through the handwork of the women who raised me, into my interpretations in pixels,” she stresses.  Secondarily, she wants readers to be aware that her work is “for sale,” she laughs.

Beyond her current exhibition at Diversions Fine Arts, she will be presenting a “solo exhibition at Gallery 825 in September, where I will be showing artwork that melds my flower mandala work printed on Japanese Kinwashi paper, combined with my great-grandmother’s doilies and laser cut decorative elements.”

Diversions Fine Arts Gallery is located at 1069 N. Aviation Blvd. in Manhattan Beach. The artists talk and closing will take place May 30th from 1 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.

  • Genie Davis; photos provided by the artist and by Davis

 

 

Scott A. Trimble Illuminates Human Emotion

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As an artist, Scott A. Trimble possesses the unique capability of illuminating emotions and feelings through his palette, subject, and even within the evocative titles of his work. Each picture tells a story: his paintings are inherently narrative, both poetic and fairytale-like, interwoven with feeling, memory, and the wonder of dreams. His writerly titles lead the viewer deep into imagery that evokes two worlds: ours, and another more surreal landscape of the mind and spirit.

Trimble says that his art revolves around events, memories, and feelings, which combined create involving visual narratives that are unique and spirited. His work is inspired by “the same things that inspire me as a human being: love, kindness, and tolerance above all else. My paintings tell stories that are distilled down to emotions. Some people may find my images dark — and some of them are in fact dark. But my aim has always been to engage people’s curiosity long enough for them to find something relatable about my work.  As far as I am concerned, if that happens, then i have achieved my goal of fostering as much tolerance as possible.”

Throughout his many years of painting, he notes that his work has kept “an identifiable personality” albeit one which has shifted in approach as time goes on.  “Change is constant and unstoppable,” Trimble says, “I am not the person I was two seconds ago. Everything changes and I love that fact!”

Thematically, he says his work is “focused on love and pairing.” It’s a natural for for his work and his personal life, and the overall rebuilding process he expresses that he is going through after a year away from work due to illness. “That is my first priority. I have a sizeable stock of work,” he says, adding that, “My work is alive, meaning that I work frequently with existing paintings. If there is one you love please let us know before it gets reworked!”

Three times in the past, Trimble has reworked canvases only to find art lovers who wanted to own the original art. Like his motion-filled art, which often seems to capture a perfect, but brief snapshot in time, the artist himself is always in motion.

His prefered medium is oils. In fact, he’s never painted with anything other than oil paint. However, in his second life working in a law firm,  he has used cardboard shipping material during lunchtime hours, working with “highlighters, sharpies and whiteout” to create beautiful on-the-fly mixed media works. In case you can’t tell, Trimble is constantly creating. He is an artist’s artist, in love with the act of making art.

These small works are treasures that he occasionally gives away, and will in fact be giving some at the closing of his current solo exhibition at Diversions Fine Arts in Manhattan Beach. The show concludes with an artists’ talk on May 30th from 1:00 to 3:30. “I have a box of those handy and I will be happy to give one to anyone who is at Diversions Fine Arts on May 30th,” Trimble asserts.

Diversions Fine Arts Gallery is located at 1069 N. Aviation Blvd. in Manhattan Beach.

  • Genie Davis; photos provided by the artist and by Davis

Kaye Freeman’s Visionary Color

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Artist Kaye Freeman is a magician of color, precision, and dreamlike artistry. Her voluptuous, vibrant works are visually galvanizing events for the eye. She says that she is inspired “by the majesty of life and the adventure each day brings. I am constantly moved by the incredible colors and patterns of the world around me, as well as by science, physics, and the Bhagavad Gita.”

Her love of color creates alchemic beauty as she thematically focuses on exploring “organic forms and the relationships between colors and shapes. I find great fulfillment in creating movement in 2D work and establishing mood through layering.”

The artist also explores the transformative micro and macro interconnections of the environment, the self, and nature. She works in painting, drawing, performance, and film, as she takes viewers on a passionate magical mystery tour that vibrates with color and surges with light and movement.

Always innovative, Freeman remarks that she has been “drawing and painting my entire life. While I have evolved over my 63 years, I am essentially the same artist at my core. I adapt my medium to my vision rather than letting the medium dictate the work; I’m the boss of my process.” She adds that a recent accident that resulted in a broken leg has changed the scale of her work to become smaller, and more concentrated.

Regardless, she wields her visionary passion using “almost anything as a medium—nothing is safe in my studio. I love oil paint, color pencils, and graphite. I also find editing short films incredibly fulfilling; it’s very similar to painting but much less messy.”

In the artist’s current exhibition as a solo artist in Gateways, now at Diversions Fine Arts Gallery in Manhattan Beach, she explores floral images that resonate with a sense of petal-driven power, work as brilliantly hued as it is delicately perfect. Beyond her current show, Freeman will have an upcoming group show at Band of Vices in June, followed by a collaborative exhibition at Matter Gallery for HibiscusTV in August.

What Freeman most hopes her viewers do is to experience her work “in person and be reminded of life before social media—the miracle of a plant growing or the way sunlight hits a petal. I want them to sit with the work, remember who they are, and recognize how amazing it is to be human. We are truly capable of so much wonder.”

Indeed, the artists’ work exudes a sense of lustrous wonder, something as softly, enormously welcoming and as vivid as a sunrise or sunset, colors that beg the eye to return again and again and take in the miracle of a joy, life, fecundity, and the words of poets.

Gateways will be on display at Diversions Fine Arts, through May 30th, when an artist talk and closing will take place. The gallery is located at 1069 N. Aviation Blvd. in Manhattan Beach, 90266.

  • Genie Davis; images provided by the artist and by Davis.

Transformations: A Review by Betty Brown

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“The passage into mystery always refreshes. If, when we work, we can look once a day upon the face of mystery, then our labor satisfies. We are lightened when our gifts rise from pools we cannot fathom.”
~Lewis Hyde, The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World

Genie Davis has expertly curated an exhibition that features three extraordinary artists: Connie Saddlemire, Amy Thornberry, and Sharon Weiner. All three deal with expressive abstraction, to one degree or another. They do so in diverse media, from Saddlemire’s photography-based printmaking to Thornberry’s painted collage to Weiner’s acrylic on canvas.

Connie Saddlemire has developed a complex process that layers altered photographs of corrugated Corten steel on solar plates to created elegant, meditative monoprints. She is inspired by the parallel lines of Corten steel architecture, as well as other repetitive geometric forms, from quilts to roof tiles to bales of hay. Saddlemire striped works recall, but do not imitate, the geometric abstractions of American Agnes Martin and Irish-born Sean Scully. The gray tones of her Square Telescope (2023) echo the metallic sheen of Corten steel. Her Summer Haori (2025), named after the Japanese jackets worn over kimonos, is composed of three sections: the central one deploys vertical lines; the lines of the two flanking sections are horizontal. The brick-red color reminds us that corrugated Corten steel develops a rust-like patina over time. (Think of the luscious rust surfaces of Richard Serra’s immense Corten steel sculptures.) Saddlemire’s rhythmically repeating lines are calming and meditative, like the cadenced noise of rain on the roof or the quiet drumbeats of Minimalist music. Viewers are drawn into the subtle modulations of color and space that–like the Trataka of object-based meditation–cultivate intense focus and awareness.

Amy Thornberry builds layered compositions based on collaged images overlaid by paint. Her gestural brushstrokes obscure the images, like the levels of earth and detritus that cover archaeological ruins. Viewers must visually “dig” through the upper levels to find the historic remains below. The Dissolution of Fragility is based on Sir John Everett Millais’ 1851-52 painting Ophelia (the tragic Shakespearean heroine). The reclining figure seems to appear then disappear, ghostlike, under cloudy white veils. Thornberry’s composition succeeds if simply appreciated for its formal pleasures (color, texture, etc.), and the female figure gives it a certain “magical” depth. A more readily perceptible image is the translucent crouching woman, whose head is silhouetted against two poppy-red “clouds.” The rewards of Thornberry’s oeuvre are found in the visual investigation of her veils of color and form. The painted collages are never just what they initially appear to be; there are always rich levels of meaning, rich varieties of signifying artistic clues.

 

Sharon Weiner’s paintings are totally abstract. She pours paint mixed with liquid acrylic over large canvases or smaller pieces of paper to create glorious images that can allude to cosmic flow. In Night Sky (2025), a dynamic white cloud, with a deep blue underside, zooms into midnight depth. Other works have biomorphic references: in Cluster (2025), purple arteries are entangled with luminous blue and yellow cells. Yet others are oceanic: In State of Grace (2025), a wave crashes on the beach, spreading its aqueous offerings. To be surrounded by Weiner’s work is to be invited to lift and expand emotionally (or dare I say spiritually?)—which is precisely what these abstract shapes are doing. The images are inspiring and her painting titles are poetic: State of Grace, Spirit, Celestial Passage, Soar, Transform. In this age of trauma, contention, and violence, it is tremendous to see a creator speaking to our highest aspirations, rather than our lesser selves. Weiner’s paintings are, like the art of all three of these truly talented and accomplished women, radiant gifts.

In his 2007 volume The Gift, Lewis Hyde explained the value of creative labor, arguing that creative work functions as a gift rather than a commodity. Shed the blinders of our capitalist economy and give yourself the gift of seeing this art.

  • Betty Brown; images courtesy of the artists