Karen Brungardt, D.O.
Watercolor Artist
Karen received her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1974 from Lycoming College in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. However, when she graduated, although she’d had a lot of fun in college, she found she didn’t have much to offer to the job market. She became a secretary for an insurance adjusting firm because she did have secretarial skills and continued dabbling in art as a hobby.
Karen moved to Kansas City, Missouri in 1975 and became a field claims adjuster for a few years. In 1977, she decided she hated that job and applied to the University of Missouri in Kansas City to attend the Masters of Art program. She was accepted and did one year toward her Master’s degree in art.
She then decided to go to Medical School instead--that paid better than being a starving artist. Karen received her D.O. degree in 1985 from the Kansas City College of Osteopathic Medicine, interned at Lakeside Hospital, and then moved to Wyoming in 1986 where she was in Family Practice for 16 years.
In college, Karen’s art interests were in oil painting, etchings and pencil drawings. While in Family Practice, she started taking watercolor classes (they were much quicker to do in her limited time off) and she fell in love with that medium.
She and her husband, Larry, moved to Saddlebrooke in 2002 to have fun, play bridge and be involved with the Art world in Saddlebrooke and elsewhere.
Since then, she has concentrated on painting in watercolors and continues taking classes while teaching Beginning Watercolor to students. She is currently President of the Saddlebrooke Fine Arts Guild and is involved with the Southern Arizona Watercolor Guild and shows her work in the SAWG gallery on Broadway. She also has her work currently displayed in the Absolutely Art Gallery in Catalina on Oracle.Not only has she attained Signature Member status with SAWG, she has earned the Saguaro Fellowlevel, the highest level of achievement available in the Southern Arizona Watercolor Guild.
