Jenny and Michael first met walking down a New York City sidewalk in opposite directions. Two and a half years later, after countless conversations deeply exploring their instant chemistry and reading more than 200 books combined, Karsouny Blake Gallery is born. 

KBG’s scope encompasses works of art done through spontaneous expression. Karsouny’s research on dropping linear narrative and storytelling in painting manifests through his experimental and abstract analog and digital work. 

The analog pieces are painted with vivid brushstrokes in acrylic and polymer on canvas, whereas his digital pieces are the result of experimental scanning and digital brush-making through many softwares. The latter are available in limited editions on canvas, cotton and aluminum composite panel. 

The aim of the work is to question traditional perspectives on projecting meaning onto artwork, and to democratize and revive the language of the Modern in contemporary painting. Through coalescing the digital and material realms, the barrier of art acquisition is pierced; and through the abstract, Painting just IS, no matter its medium. 

Please do not hesitate to contact us for conceptual and logistical questions, for adding a piece of ours to your art collection, or just to say hello! We’re looking forward to hearing from you : )

With love, 
—Michael and Jenny

Michael Karsouny

“I paint dreams.” Michael Karsouny is a contemplative contemporary fine artist, painter, and self-described psychonaut. Through his work, he explores consciousness and human experience across themes such as grief, metamorphosis, joy, renaissance, and resurrection. Karsouny hails from Beirut, Lebanon, where in 2012 he was voted one of Communicate Levant Magazine’s “30 Creatives Under 30,” after graduating from the American University of Beirut and the Lebanese University for the Arts with degrees in Graphic Design and Fine Art. From 2012 to 2014, Karsouny deepened his technical prowess in an experimental Painting & Drawing  program at the Art Department (TAD) in San Diego. In 2018, Karsouny completed a Masters in Fine Art at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York City, where he shifted from a more traditional background in figurative painting to larger-scale Abstract Expressionism and conceptual digital art. Upon graduating from SVA, Karsouny completed a summer residency with Lebanese-Armenian master painter, Emmanuel Guiragossian, at the renowned Paul Guiragossian Museum in Beirut.  

Karsouny’s most recent work blends digital and analog painting through a process that emphasizes deep research, mindfulness, and impermanence. As his saying goes, “Output is irrelevant.” Process is everything. Just as our world continues to be rocked by seismic political, economic, and technical shifts—in a state of perpetual flux—the image now exists in a “post-analog” world. Karsouny embraces this with intrigue and investigation, diving deeply into human psychology to produce work that speaks directly to the childlike spirit within all of us, no matter how dormant. His “Life of a Lebanese Artist,” project incorporated humor, self-expression, and meaning through memes. His experiential “Blessings Generator,” displayed at MACAM museum in November 2019 in Lebanon, inspired reflection on our thirst for admiration and approval through social media: what if the apps we are increasingly addicted to replaced likes with randomly-generated blessings instead? 

 As one reviewer noted of Karsouny’s submission to SVA’s senior show, a 165cm x 150cm painting titled The Untitled One from his “Primordial Oozah” collection: 

“Every generation of painters since Picasso unveiled ‘Les Demoiselles d’ Avignon’ delivers its bookend to this paradigm-shifting masterpiece. Karsouny’s ‘The Untitled One’ is our monument, our re-statement of the destruction-creation of the Renaissance paradigm. 

. . . Karsouny uses texture, color, and tints to convey a light-hearted, unambiguous, energetic bliss. ‘Untitled One’ is a blissful bookend to ‘Les Demoiselles.’ We have waited 112 years for an answer to Picasso’s masterpiece. The joy in Karsouny’s work is a statement to all who paint and all who love painting. Long-live painting! It’s ALIVE.”

 The permanence of traditional painting—the archetypal art object—has been rattled by the persistent morphing of the impermanent digital world. Karsouny wrestles with this tension, between the traditional and the hyper-contemporary, through works that reimagine painting altogether. Some paintings appear to digitally repeat, to glitch across the canvas. Others may appear loud and chaotic, yet have an underlying harmony of color, content, and composition that can only result from someone with Karsouny’s 15+ years of deep training, research, experience, and self-exploration—and a lifetime of sketching, beginning with cartoons as a kid. Karsouny’s works are loud, garishly “digital,” thought-provoking, experiential, childlike, playful, and most importantly, free.

Jenny Blake 

Jenny Blake is an author, career and business strategist and international speaker who helps people move beyond burnout to build sustainable, dynamic careers they love. She is the author of Pivot: The Only Move That Matters is Your Next One, which won the Axiom Best Business Books award in the careers category. Jenny also hosts the popular Pivot Podcast, which CNBC listed among 6 podcasts to make you smarter about your career, and Entrepreneur selected as one of the top 20 female-hosted business podcasts. 

After two years at a technology start-up in Silicon Valley followed by five years at Google in Training and Career Development, Jenny moved to New York City in 2011 where she has been running her own consulting business in the years since, helping clients like Google, Microsoft and Chanel incorporate the Pivot Method into their career programs.

Jenny grew up in a family that loved and appreciates the arts, and always encouraged creative expression and launching new ventures. Her parents met at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design—her mom has had a celebrated 20+ year career as Associate Director of Stanford University’s campus planning team, and her father Jim Blake is a highly accomplished architect, painter, writer, musician and thinker. He had her in his art studio from a young age, which planted the seeds for what would become this gallery.

In Jenny’s words:

My dad has been a painter all of his life, and was the first one to teach me how to see through an artist’s eyes, even helping me fling paint across empty canvases in his studio as a kid. “Notice how the overcast skies amplify all the green plants and trees,” he’d tell me on our weekly walks as I grew older, pointing out color names for objects that ranged from seafoam green to cerulean blue and everything else in-between.

I have tremendous respect for artists, particularly the way they aren’t afraid to break from the status quo. I admire their dedication to asking questions, pushing boundaries, exploring the farthest reaches of consciousness, and expressing themselves in all manner of mediums.

With Karsouny Blake gallery, we are highlighting emerging artists who are unfettered in their freedom of expression, and at the same time talented when it comes to navigating details that only a trained eye can see. (A skill that I’m sure I’ll remain a perpetual beginner at!) It’s an honor to help bring more of this work into the world, and into your home :)