Karen O'Lone-Hahn has been a professional practicing artist for 12 years, creating a world of imagination, color, whimsy and stark individuality. Memories of a blue-collar Irish Catholic upbringing is what compels artist Karen O’Lone-Hahn to paint. Born in Trenton, NJ., the daughter of a waitress and a factory worker, Karen attended Blessed Sacrament Elementary school. Her natural ability in art first showed itself in first grade when the teacher summoned her mother and sister to the school to see a picture of a bird that Karen had drawn.

In the seventh grade, Karen moved to Buffalo, NY where she completed high school. A few years later she moved to S.C. and then to Boston, Mass. While living in Boston, she got the news that her mother was dying of cancer. This painful event was the catalyst for her beginnings as an oil painter. Her reminiscent early paintings were inspired by old black and white family photographs that she found in her mothers apartment. She spent hours painting in silence as her mother would rest on the living room couch. After her mothers death, Karen continued painting from the old family photographs, eventually compiling a collection of black and whites (Available for viewing upon request).

Five years later, Karen enrolled in Buffalo State College where her academic prowess was noted with honors and awards for excellence in Art Education. She received her B.S. degree in 1990. During her time at Buffalo State, she was encouraged by a painting professor who was impressed by her early black and white work, declaring her style as “primitive”. He encouraged her further by not wanting to interfere with her naïve style and left the budding artist alone to create paintings as independent studies.

After graduation, she left Buffalo for Philadelphia. It was here that she met her husband and settled down. She taught art at a private Catholic school in Drexel Hill and later in the Downingtown Area School District. In her early years as a painter in Philadelphia, she began experimenting with color in some landscapes and eventually carried her self-taught style into a whole world full of characters drawn from memories of her Catholic school days, to a series devoted to snapshots of people on the couch*, to her whimsical cows.

*Commisions accepted, please contact
Karen for pricing and information.

Karen is now a full time professional artist and mother. Primarily self taught, Karen has exhibited at the Outsider Art Fair in NYC and at the Atlanta Folk Festival. Her work has been sold and won many accolades in galleries and art shows and is being collected across the U.S. and abroad. She now lives in Kemblesville, Pa. where she enjoys raising her daughter and being an artist with the support and love of her husband Al Hahn, a local musician.