Karen Maness is a multi-disciplined artist and a professor of practice at the University of Texas at Austin. She is known for her expansive landscapes and intimate portraits. Maness's career in the American theatre has profoundly affected her studio practice, reminding her time and again of the palpable, intimate interplay between character and environment.

Maness investigates borderless universal spaces between time, nature, culture, and human connection. The physicality of painting is critical in her practice, mining each layer of paint for authentic connection and openings to undiscovered spaces and interior worlds.