ARTIST BIO

  Karina Vogt is a self taught artist with a love for wildlife, dance, music and high quality artwork . She spent the early years of her childhood between Manitou Springs, CO and Boulder, CO, living in or surrounded by mountains.   She was often busy with creating art as a child. 

  In 1986 she joined The Great Peace March with her father and 2 sisters. For 6 months they travelled from Colorado to Washington D.C. in a slow moving political caravan promoting global nuclear disarmament. On the march, Karina danced the part of Sadako in a dance production narrated to haiku’s  called Sadako’s Dance of 1000 Paper Cranes'. They performed the production over 30 times in venues ranging from theaters to churches to street theater. After the march she joined her mother in Oregon, with her younger sister. For 4 years, Karina danced in a small local Portland dance company called Kolomashi.

  In 1998, Karina fell in love with the vibrant dance culture in NYC and she moved to Manhattan to pursue her dream of dancing with a professional dance company. She trained in ballet and West African dances styles from Guinea and Senegal. This combination of  diverse dance skills landed her in a company called Magbana. Karina danced with this energetic and exciting company for 6 years.

All the while, Karina maintained a practice of painting, taking basic technical courses, but mostly developing her own process. She also studied jewelry rendering and worked for a year in Kristen Hanson’s eponymous jewelry studio as an assistant teacher and bench worker.

From 2009-2010, Karina worked as artistic director for the non-profit, Blissful Bedrooms, producing art and directing a team of talented artists to created murals and canvas stretched paintings for the magical bedroom makeovers of teenagers with cerebral palsy, living in the Bronx, NYC.

In 2013, Karina became certified in Muscle Activation Techniques. A manual form of neuromuscular therapy. Practicing MAT requires endless study and understanding of the human neuromuscular system which informs her art when rendering anatomy. 

  During this time, Karina spent much of her time painting in her Brooklyn studio. As her work progressed so did interest in her work and she began selling paintings. In conjunction with painting, Karina cultivated a beading practice designing and rendering heirloom quality beaded jewelry which became popular in her Brooklyn and NYC communities.

At the end of 2019, Karina left New York and moved back into the mountains of Colorado, with her partner, Lee. Her father, a gifted carpenter, transformed a rugged wood shop into a beautiful artist studio where she currently works on her paintings and beaded jewelry. Her work must be seen in person to fully experience the ‘vivid aliveness’ of her paintings.