Karen Purple makes work that engages with the landscape, collecting images, natural materials and objects that go on to inform her work in the studio. She was selected for the Discerning Eye Exhibition (2015) and was a finalist for the Threadneedle Prize (2012) both at the Mall Galleries, London. She was also selected for exhibitions at the RWA, Bristol (2011,2012,2013). Her work is held in private collections as well as Art UK (formally the Public Foundation Catalogue). She regularly travels to the British coastline to work, and has been selected for residencies across the UK and Ireland.

The last few years have been spent working from a studio in the woods near her home in Oxfordshire.

Inspired by an interest in natural history and the work of both the biologist and the landscape historian, she makes work that engages with the landscape and the organic materials within it. Her drawings develop from these observations that are both a response to what she sees but also what she experiences. There is an intensity of looking at the smallest details, of finding colour in a winter landscape or a moment of stillness in full spring growth. She may be looking at the movement of water in a river or sea, exploring reflections and imagined happenings beneath the surface. She is fascinated by nature's activities constantly in a continuum and state of flux.

Drawings may also be made in the studio after Karen's daily walk where she can then work with memory of place. She is interested in how memory can become distorted over time, how some details can become dominant in the imagination and other details become slowly erased. She may refer to collected plant material, earth and other natural objects that have caught her eye and have a new home on her studio table. The drawings have to be made at the start of the day when the experience she has absorbed is still at the forefront of her mind, without distraction - so the paper will have been prepared and stacked waiting to be used. She will select the medium according to what feels the most appropriate - whether it is the softest chalk pastels, some found soil or charcoal, watercolour, acrylic or oil paint.