Karen Gunderson

Elizabeth Frank has written extensively on both art and literature, including a biography of Louise Bogan. She has taught at Temple University, U.C. Irvine, and Williams, Mills, and Bard colleges.

"This is a beautiful book, beautifully written, produced with great care and understanding [...] Frank is able to interpret Gunderson's vision and its increasingly dramatic imagery based on an original technique with sensitivity and insight rare in an art book." --Barbara Rose, art critic "Though her themes vary, perhaps the principle subject is elegance -- moral as much as aesthetic elegance."--Christopher Stackhouse, American writer and visual artist "Taking the color black as her prime subject, Gunderson's achievement is to have explored its every nuance, ranging from the spiritual to the tactile, the seen and the imagined. In darkness, Gunderson's brush reveals light itself." --David Anfam, art historian "If one thinks of Karen Gunderson only as the extraordinarily unique artist who was able to elicit infinite possibilities from cloud formations or to make us realize the intense possibilities of creating contour and form out of the intractability of black paint, this publication will reveal the limitations of those perceptions." --Lowery Sims, Curator Emerita at the Museum of Arts and Design "Through The Dark World of Light by Elizabeth Frank and Abbeville Press, we gain a rare insight into the evolution of Karen Gunderson's mastery. Her careful attention to the mechanics of brush stroke has led to her unique ability to paint with light. As we watch her paintings shift and move, we become aware of our changing vantage and the role we play in their animation. Startling that such a high level of effect can result from so little." --William Siegal Gallery

• List of chapters: 1. Beginnings 1967-1972 2. Into the Blue 1973-1985 3. Darkness Visible 1986-1989 4. Experiments and Explorations 1990-2010 5. Moral Courage 1993-2000 6. The Royal Gundersons 1997-2009 7. Cosmos and Elements 2004-2014 8. Continuum and Coda 2011-2015 Notes List of Plates Chronology Exhibitions Selected Bibliography Index Acknowledgments Photography Credits