Karina Bania is a mixed media painter living in California. Largely self-taught, her degree is in Business, but she picked up a paintbrush and a backpack the day after graduating. She spent many years living around the world developing her art. While studying in India, she began incorporating local pigments and dyes into her work, eventually developing her unique style of stained washes and shapes on raw canvas. In addition to solo and group exhibitions, Bania has been licensing and selling her artwork across the US and abroad. Her work has been featured in marketplaces and publications such as Restoration Hardware, Land of Nod, Riviera Magazine, San Diego Magazine, and LUXE. ARTIST STATEMENTMy paintings explore the abstract geographies that we navigate in our lives. Each painting begins as a field of space from which an environment arises. As the space is acted upon, a conversation ensues between emptiness and fullness, stillness and movement, objects seen and energy felt. The compositions that emerge are built from these contrasting forces which together, create a sense of place and balance. Geometric shapes of color live in harmony with abstract washes of dye. Built up layers of depth grace empty fields of raw, untouched canvas. Mistakes are made, scratched out and left unhidden. These traces are notions of connection.I work from intuition, response and presence. These paintings are created in the moment. Uncovering interactions, revealing things unseen, and developing connections are what unfold.