Karen Margolis creates abstract works on paper, sculptures, and installations using materials including watercolor, gouache, abaca paper, maps, thread, and wire. Her process combines burning holes into paper with layering, painting, and assembling individual components. Repeated circles, perforations, and networks of connecting lines are central to her imagery.

Informed by her studies in psychology and microscopy, Margolis explores relationships between mental processes and patterns in the natural world. She uses both solid forms and empty spaces to examine connections between the physical and psychological, with destruction, reconstruction, damage, and repair recurring throughout her practice.

A New York-based artist, she earned a BS in Psychology from Colorado State University and studied at the Art Students League of New York, Parsons School of Design, and the School of Visual Arts. She also holds a certificate in microscopy from the New York Microscopical Society.

Her work has been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, the Parrish Art Museum, the Weatherspoon Art Museum, and Museum Rijswijk in the Netherlands. Solo exhibitions include presentations at Foley Gallery in New York, K. Imperial Fine Art in San Francisco, and Garis & Hahn in Los Angeles.

Margolis received a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 1998, a Dieu Donné workspace residency in 2000, and a Trellis Art Fund Founders Grant in 2024. Her public commissions include Cerebration (2018), a mosaic installation at Brooklyn’s 86 Street N-line subway station, and installations for Amtrak at Moynihan Train Hall in New York and Union Station in Washington, DC. Her work is held in collections including the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College.