Dreams full of voltage: Karina Lumiere’s abstract works electrify the art scene

Karina Lumiere paints like someone who trusts color more than language. Her work does not whisper its intentions. It glows, pulses, seduces.

This is abstraction born not from theory, but from devotion—devotion to intuition, to sensation, to the unapologetic power of hue as an emotional instrument.

Her path to abstract expressionism was never academic. It unfolded in solitude, shaped by meditation and spiritual practice, where listening became more important than learning and presence eclipsed instruction. Lumiere does not arrive at the canvas armed with a plan. She arrives open. She listens to the surface, to her inner register, to something larger and less nameable. From that listening, images emerge fully charged—symbols and narratives that feel inevitable rather than constructed.

Her work lives at the intersection of surrealism and abstract expressionism, with a distinctly feminine command of color that recalls the audacity of Fauvism. Color is not subordinate to form; it leads. Like Matisse and Derain before her, Lumiere understands chroma as a psychological force rather than an ornament. Saturation becomes sensation. Contrast becomes tension. Vibrancy becomes insistence. The eye does not simply observe these paintings. It enters them.

“Nature’s Embrace” by Karina LumierePhoto by Avalon Ashley Bellos

There is a candy-coated intensity to her palette—electric pinks, radiant blues, citrus yellows—that reads playful at first glance, then reveals its seriousness. This is beauty with teeth. Fauvism shattered the notion that color must behave. Lumiere carries that lineage forward, using pigment as a language of feeling rather than representation, allowing emotion to arrive before meaning and sensation to outrun explanation.

Working primarily in acrylic and mixed media, she builds her canvases through a meticulous layering process. Thin, translucent glazes accumulate slowly, allowing light to pass through strata of pigment until the surface begins to glow from within. Texture adds resistance. Luminosity adds seduction. The result is an internal light that feels alive, as though the painting is breathing back at you.

Her compositions do not explain themselves, nor do they ask to be solved. They operate on a visceral register where memory, desire, and transformation circulate freely. These works invite projection and emotional risk. They are not puzzles. They are atmospheres.

Karina Lumiere paints like someone who trusts color more than language. Her work does not whisper its intentions. It glows, pulses, seduces.Photo by Avalon Ashley Bellos

Lumiere’s practice has garnered international recognition, with exhibitions at Art Fair Barcelona, Art Fair Monaco, Art Fair Munich, Art Bodensee in Dornbirn, Fresh Paint in Israel, the Jewish Museum in Turin, and the Georgian Museum of Fine Arts in Tbilisi, alongside solo presentations in Tel Aviv and across Europe. Each context affirms the same truth: her language of color travels fluently, unbound by geography.

Her New York solo exhibition last year marked a pivotal moment, introducing American audiences to her dream-charged universe with clarity and confidence. The show was met with strong attendance, critical curiosity, and collector engagement, underscoring an artist fully in command of her voice and unafraid of beauty.

In Karina Lumiere’s world, dreams are not an escape from reality. They are one of its most honest expressions. Her work reminds us that color has always been one of our most powerful tools for emotional truth, and that femininity, when wielded with this level of conviction, is not soft. It is electric.

More information can be found at www.karinalumiere.com, with ongoing works and studio glimpses on Instagram at @karinalumiere.art.