Karen Fortune once observed to a Johannesburg attorney who owns 10 of her canvases and buys from no other artist but her for either home or office: ‘You see the world the same way I do.’

While it’s tempting to pigeonhole Karen’s work as photorealism, she is likely to point out that the correct term is ‘hyperrealism’, which, she explains, unlike its closest relatives, realism and photorealism, is best described as resembling a high-resolution digital photograph in that the detail is ultrafine, but differs in terms of the darker shadows, brighter lights and more intense contrasts. Not all her paintings are hyperrealistic, but it’s the point of perfection at which she is most comfortable.

Paintings in these realistic genres are often viewed with an element of scepticism. Someone recently said, somewhat dismissively, that a painting ‘is meant to look like a painting’. That comment drove Karen to research the topic extensively, so that she could have a ready retort for such statements. ‘I can’t understand people who believe their opinions are fact,’ she says, grimacing.

Somehow, when one takes in the vastness of her painted landscapes, one pictures the artist as being larger than life, but Karen is not like that at all. Rather, she’s entirely unassuming, and admits to a sense of trepidation that accompanies her whenever she approaches a fresh canvas. ‘I look at the brush, its size, and I look at the one-point-three metres of white canvas, and wonder if I’ll be able to do it; whether I’ll be up to the challenge of getting it right,’ she laughs. In the hyperrealism style, ‘getting it right’ is ‘not about a pretty picture’, she says, shrugging. ‘It’s often not even about the subject matter. It’s about recreating the atmosphere, capturing the light. That’s what my paintings are about. And when you look at that painting, suddenly something will jump out at you, a sense of a place you visited 10 years ago, and you can smell the smells, feel the mood…’

Karen’s journey to becoming a full-time artist has been a convoluted one. She has been painting since she was six years old. Although she showed artistic talent – ‘I won the primary school art prize’, she laughs – she had always considered painting a hobby rather than a career. After her school years, she went off to teachers training college for a short spell, but didn’t complete her studies. She worked as a waitress to pay off her study loan, and then, on her friends’ advice and despite her passion for South Africa, she moved to Iceland, where she spent three or four happy years in a small town, enjoying kibbutz-style living, working hard as a fish-packer, and painting.

Karen set herself up with a limited selection of oil pastels and watercolours. The sheets of waxed cardboard used to separate the packed fish served as her canvasses. ‘I even had an exhibition,’ she says. Everybody from the close-knit community and surrounds turned out to support her, and she sold each and every painting. ‘It was my first and only solo exhibition,’ she says. She was 23 years old at the time.

Sad to leave Iceland, but too homesick to stay, Karen returned to South Africa and earned a living in the kitchen of the local SPCA, preparing meals for the dogs. She developed a passion for carpentry, mastering her new craft with the help of magazine articles and a neighbour, an elderly master cabinetmaker. She supplied a cottage furniture shop with standard items, and designed custom-made furniture for private clients. ‘I must have made 500 bookcases over the years,’ she says.

All the while, she continued to paint. One time, when she took three of her paintings to be framed, the gallery owner urged her to put some of her art on sale. Although they sold, Karen still didn’t take the leap into painting fulltime for a living. The birth of her son changed all that.
‘Until then, I’d painted when I felt like it. You can’t survive like that,’ she says. ‘For the first time in my life, I put my head down and worked every day. I started waking up at around 4am, like I do now, and, wow, did it bear fruit. I went at it like a mad dog – have ever since – and went from strength to strength.’

Every artist needs a mentor. Cherie de Villiers became that positive force in Karen’s life when she ‘discovered’ her for her Johannesburg Gallery. To this day, says Karen, Cherie continues to drive, motivate and encourage her.

Karen and her husband, Dion, head off into the unknown for an intense four- to five-day photographic expedition once a year, with numerous shorter trips in between. It’s all about gathering material. ‘Dion drives, stops, reverses, never a complaint, and I take about 700 photographs,’ says Karen. She smiles, then adds: ‘It takes a special kind of person to be that tolerant. It’s gruelling.’ How does she know where to go next? The thing is, she doesn’t. ‘I thumb-suck. Truly,’ she says. ‘We have a map and a compass. I find a place I’ve never heard of, Google it, and if it has what I think it might, we go. We take chances. Back roads, especially in the Karoo. When I phone to book accommodation, the person on the line often suggests other places…’

Although she has lived abroad, Karen is happiest in South Africa. ‘People always say you can go and paint anywhere in the world, but I can’t. My passion is Africa, South Africa,’ she says. ‘We go to places that most people will never see. The back roads of everywhere. Ours is absolutely the most beautiful country in the world.’

Karen paints southern African landscapes, houses – usually abandoned – and, well, garage doors. She shrugs. ‘I have a passion for garage doors,’ she says. ‘I’ve discovered that people who’re into hyperrealism are often drawn to painting the strangest subject matter. I sometimes am compelled to paint a particular picture, and can’t do anything else until I’ve done so. My garage doors don’t appeal to everybody, but I have to do them. There’s always somebody who relates to them as I do…