AboutKaren Serago

I’m a visual artist living in State College, Pennsylvania.  Following 22 years of working at Penn State as an academic adviser, I retired in 2024 to return to my artistic roots. I’m currently working in oil, painting portraits of family members who have passed and portraits of my younger self.  I like bringing family back to life through the slow process of painting as opposed to the swiftness of using a camera or cellphone to capture an image.  The paintings are based on my own photographs.

I earned my MFA in Photography from Ohio University then  spent a decade living abroad in Taipei, Taiwan in the 1990s. This period of cultural transition served as the catalyst for my literary work, resulting in the publication of a photo monograph—My Other Neighborhood, and a memoir— Circling Towards Home. 

Photographs from My Other Neighborhood are held in the permanent collection at The Taiwan Museum of Art.