"Karen Salup's work demand[s] simply to be seen, rather than read. Her strategy is fairly consistent: she layers stroke upon stroke of solor, building up a surface that, vevertheless, appears impossibly deep. Salup wants her paintings to resonate, and this they do--pastel blues converse loudly with crimson, vermilion, and black. Purple waltzes with orange and maroon. And all ultimately dissolve into a shimmering vortex of pure painting that paradoxically seems to emerge outward, toward the viewer.

Yet observed nature underlies these seemingly abstract gestures. Beneath these sensuous odes, we sense the obscured presence of actual rivers, backyards, autumn leaves and summer sunsets. It's as if Salup has not so much painted the world as painted over it with her own emotions."

-Ariella Budick, Newsday

"Here indeed is an artist who knows how to direct her tremendous energy and exuberance….Salup’s method of painting is to redo the image of the visual world into the reality of her own imagination. She does this literally with her brush strokes. Salup builds up her canvases and experimental works on paper, as well as breaks down her images, with a multitude and variety of short brush strokes…In sum, Salup’s paintings resemble a late 20th century version, a jazzed , electrified counterpart, to Claude Monet’s ‘Water Lilies,’ without their serenity. As one continues to ‘allow the eye’ to find new manifestations in the painting, just as is done for Monet, Karen Salup’s ‘Profile’ does not modify the color and forms as much, but it becomes a movement into depth and form themselves…One notes in the colors and in the informal grids of Karen Salup’s all over painting abstractions (Abstractions they remain, despite her allusion to ‘real’ space and the figure) that she has an affinity to nature, as she directs an Impressionist flickerings of light over the scene. Ultimately, she reveals her personal role in this emotional ferment which her art brings into harmony."

-Abraham Ilein, Artspeak

"Karen Salup paints with flecks of color in a style that might be called abstract impressionism. Actually, that term was once applied to the 1950’s work of Philip Guston, with whom she shares an affinity for masses of vibrant strokes balance by lighter, more open areas…With titles like ‘Fire Fly’ and ‘Morning Light,’ Ms. Salup’s paintings cannot help but conjure up gardens filled with flitting insects and shimmering petals. Although such imagery is not overtly depicted, it is evoked by means of dancing brushwork that alludes to natural phenomena…Scraps of collaged paper further enliven the already busy surfaces, nicely counteracting what might otherwise have appeared to be illusionistic depth. In spite of being almost hidden, these collage elements serve an important function in Ms. Salup’s compositions."

-Helen A. Harrison, The New York Times

"Karen Salup’s action-packed painting, ‘Bolero,’ recalls the turns and twist of the Spanish dance for which it’s named. Slaup’s work is included in a four-person show…Karen H. Salup’s decorative acrylic and mixed-media paintings, which have the gallery’s large second room to themselves are brightly colored gestural abstractions that are reminiscent of the centered, thatched compositions of Mark Tobay as well as the swirled and scumbled canvases of Kandinsky."

-Margaret Moorman, Newsday

"Around the corner, in the gallery’s other space at 12 Village Square, a one-woman show by Karen H. Salup features abstract acrylic paintings on canvas and paper…Her calligraphic compositions recall the gestural works of such predecessors as Jack Tworkov and Joan Mitchell, in which veiled reference to nature combine with pure color and line to create labyrinthine structures… ‘Bolero analogizes the swirling musical crescendo in leaping waves of paint that also suggest foliage whipped by a hurricane. A gentler breeze seems to agitate the pigment in ‘Blue Night,’ with occasional flashes of pink and yellow enlivening the darkness like lights glimpsed through fluttering leaves…The largest work, ‘Three Daughters,’ is a triptych that weaves organic shapes into a complex linear tapestry. Embryonic images emerge, only to melt back into the welter of interlocking fragments that form the basis of this subtle composition."

-Helen A. Harrison, The New York Times