Karen Kain attended Brown University and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her first degree was in performance, her second was in painting and drawing. She did an apprenticeship Kazuaki Tanahashi, a master Japanese brush painter and noted translator of Zen texts.
THE VINTAGE MAN
The
Difference
Between a good artist
And a great one
Is:
The novice
Will often lay down his tool
or brush
Then pick up an invisible club
On the mind's table
And helplessly smash the easels and
Jade.
Whereas the vintage man
No longer hurts himself or anyone
And keeps on
Sculpting
Light.
-Hafiz (transl. by Daniel Ladinsky)
When visiting an exhibition of children's drawings, Piscasso remarked: "When I was their age I could draw like Raphael, but it took me a lifetime to learn to draw like them."
(Penrose, Picasso: His Life and Work, 1958, p. 275)