Karen Buck-Mackintosh graduated with a B.F.A. from Mount Allison University, New Brunswick in 1981, (major in photography/ minor in printmaking.)  Karen received her B.Ed. from the University of Toronto in 1984. She instructed Art/Photography for 27 years. Karen Buck-Mackintosh is a practicing artist working in photography, printmaking, paint, and mixed media. She currently resides in Madoc, Ontario.

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    Karen's photography includes the historical cyanotype iron salt process pioneered by Sir John Herschel in the early 1840’s. Karen measures and mixes the two-part, light sensitive emulsion and then coats it on to B.F.K. Reeves printmaking paper. She creates enlarged negatives on transparency film using a digital printer. The negatives are contacted printed under glass and exposed to ultraviolet light outdoors under the summer sun for exposures up to eight minutes. The photographs are then processed in water with a few added drops of hydrogen peroxide to heighten the desired blue colour. Karen has worked with subject matter such as portraits, bones, snakeskins, water, snow, and most recently snake rail fences in this medium. Her recent theme explores the boundaries that man has used to delineate property ownership. These fences are intended to visually keep others out while containing and holding in for a perceived sense of security.

 

    Buck-Mackintosh works in analog black and white film, shooting with a Nikon F6, and digital photography through the lens of a Leica Q2.  Over the past ten years she has been working on a project in rural Ontario. This ‘Obsolecere’ series records and expresses her concerns about the demise of original barn architecture and the beauty of the hand-built structures. The technology of agriculture continues to change, as does the usage of A1 farmland.  Storing hay outdoors in white plastic tubes, factory farming, and solar farms have changed the value of maintaining the historic wooden barns.

 

    Karen Buck-Mackintosh has exhibited in numerous group and juried shows; including Toronto's CONTACT Photography Festival. Karen's award winning work draws inspiration from her personal environment and relationships in a manner that is often cathartic in nature. Her photographs were accepted into the ‘RMG Exposed’ photography auction in 2017 and 2018.  Buck-Mackintosh had a solo exhibition at the WAAC, Toronto, ON in 2020, the Kawartha Art Gallery, Lindsay, ON in 2019, and at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, ON in 1995. Karen has received three Ontario Arts Council Grants. Her work is in the collections of The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, Ontario; The Owen’s Art Gallery, Sackville, New Brunswick; and private collectors in Canada and the United States. Karen’s photography work has been published in O.S.S.T.F. Education Forum