Karen Stanton

Karen Stanton is a children’s book author/illustrator and artist who started out as an architect. She has a Master’s degree in Architecture from UC Berkeley where she studied under Christopher Alexander (A Pattern Language). A few years (and a few kids) later, she found that she was much happier applying the principles she had learned in her formal education to the design of smaller things that she could make herself, like paintings, illustrated books and art. No education is ever wasted.

She has three traditionally published children’s books and has taught visual design/art in a public elementary school and for many years taught Writing and Illustrating Books for Children at City College San Francisco. Her art is multimedia. She uses acrylic paint, gouache, India ink, watercolor, Caran D’ache wax pastels, colored pencil and her favorite part of art making, collage. Since she lives part time in Spain, she has done a lot of traveling in Europe and other parts of the world. Wherever she goes, she collects paper: a book on the game Go she found in a box on the street in Tokyo, Japan, old notebooks and journals from Paris and Spain, a vintage (and water damaged) “Bobbsey Twins” book she found in a garage sale in Florida, newspapers from Marrakesh and 1945 Spain, a math book from Athens, Greece and of course paper she has come across in her hometown of Oakland, California. She is currently working on a cool public art project for the new Hall of Justice in Alameda County where she lives. And working on several children's book projects. When she's not working in her studio, she is at the dog park with her best boy Javier or at the gym. She makes and teaches art for the fun of it. Enjoy.