🌸 Welcome to Karen Hansen Art

-I create, therefore I am-

Kia ora, beautiful souls.

Welcome to Karen Hansen Art, a sacred space where spirit, creativity, and nature come together.

I’m Karen Hansen-Daniels, a Rotorua artist whose work explores the living relationship between humans and the more-than-human world.
Rooted in the geothermal landscapes and ancient podocarp forests of Rotorua, New Zealand, my art invites you to step beyond right and wrong ... into a place of unity, where Nature’s spirits speak through feelings, images, and direct revelation.

Every piece I create is a conversation with the land, woven through the sacred textures of Rotorua art and spirit.

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🌿 Woven Through Creativity and Nature

My earliest memory of art is sneaking into the lounge in the dark as a child, red pen in hand, scribbling over one of my mother's unicorn illustrations.
Growing up, I watched her sketch her emotions onto paper...monsters, angels, archetypes... and I received, without knowing, a lived education in art as a language of the unseen and unspeakable.

Later, as a theatre kid, I carried that creative impulse onto the stage.
As a teenage mother, I took it to the streets of Rotorua, singing my pain to strangers while busking, and receiving in return both money and moments of human compassion. In my adult years, I started a face and body art business, and became very good at reaching into people's hearts and painting them as their inner desires, powers, and imaginations. Art has always been my bridge to connection.

I grew up split between a single mother, where I carried too much responsibility as a role-reversed daughter, and a grandmother who offered both great gifts and wounds.
Amid these matriarchal contradictions, I found my true solace and belonging in the natural world.

I played in sulphur crystals like sand.
I built sacred spaces beneath low-hanging trees and in hidden bamboo forests.
I drew spiraling glyphs in the dirt, watched the dance of light on water, prayed to weeping willows by the Mangakakahi Stream, and offered strands of my hair in exchange for curling wooden blessings.

Nature saw me.
Nature heard me.
And I learned to listen back.

Creativity has always been my form of soul healing: a way of remembering that beauty rises even from the deepest roots of pain, and dark experiences offer the greatest enlightenment, taken into the creative field.
Nature reflects my own inner light, grown from the darkness of my past... and to my delight, I have discovered that I am both the Sovereign of my life and the Alchemist of my own becoming.

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🌙 I Create, therefore I AM: My Practice Today

From those early days of secret offerings to the trees and prayers to the river, a path was laid: one I still walk today as an artist, an alchemist, and a sacred witness.

My creative process is a continuation of that conversation: a way of listening, gathering, and co-creating with the living world and my environment through mixed media, botanical and earth pigments, upcycling, cast form and found elements. I love to use materials in unexpected ways, where an assemblage of the natural and the synthetic becomes a surprising love affair. In this way, I create not only paintings and sculptures, but myself—my life and authentic being is the greatest work of art I can offer to the world.

Inspiration often arrives quietly: a simple white feather lying on the beach, held up to the sunrise, becoming prismatic.
It is in these moments of wonder that I find the energy and awe to create.

Nature reaches out in countless ways to teach us... to remind us of our own co-creative power and innate divinity.
I walk through life with my eyes and heart open, gathering sacred messages as seeds for my art.

My work seeks to translate these encounters and ideascapes into symbolic language, creating artworks that act as doorways, helping others remember the everyday magic and unseen wisdom woven through our lives.

Often, the pieces themselves guide me.
One powerful artwork demanded hundreds of feathers—each gathered directly from the land, battered or broken, shining or hidden.
That same piece called for red ochre (the blood of the Earth), mixed with cyclone waters, to honor the strength and shadow within the feminine.

In the weaving of that work, a gateway appeared... one of many: thresholds into the inner spiritual realms, found through deep immersion and sacred creation, like the spiderweb grandmothers who wove worlds together.

It was only natural, as I walked deeper into this relationship, that I began speaking with the artworks themselves: listening for their voices, their wisdom.
Out of this evolving practice, Creative Witness was born in 2018: a blend of sensory meditation and automatic writing that allows me to understand the hidden layers of the world around me... and within me.

In recent years, my palette has expanded to include earth pigments, lake pigments, sacred waters, plant dyes, molded forms, and prayers woven invisibly into every piece.
From this deep alchemy, another offering emerged: Essence Natura: Earth and Sky elixirs, crafted to bring the living energy of these creations directly into the human body and spirit.

Each creation is a prayer, a conversation, and a remembrance:
that we are not separate from Nature;
we are part of her dreaming, her hands, her breath.

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🌿 Karen Hansen Art - Current Offerings

Over time, the seeds of experience and communion have blossomed into offerings I now share with the wider world: artworks, sacred experiences, and earth-born medicines designed to awaken the remembering in all of us.

Each offering carries the spirit of reverence, wonder, and co-creation that shaped my own path.
At present, I am tending three primary branches, a power number; but already, new fruit is ripening: jewellery, sacred body art, and mixed media art journey boxes await future unfolding.

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✨ 1. Artworks

Inspired by the ancient bas-relief sculptures found in places of worship, my artworks capture energetic impressions: both assemblage mixed media components, often painted in wildcrafted pigments \ natural inks,  made with sacred waters I have built relationship with, and infused with elixirs or ritual smoke.

Each Karen Hansen Artwork (valued over $300) arrives with an elegant gold-edged certificate of authenticity, enclosed in a folder and sealed with an embossed mark of provenance.
Even the unboxing experience has been lovingly considered, worthy of the living aura these creations carry.

➔ You are warmly invited to explore available artworks here,

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✨ 2. Creative Witness: Gatherings and Personal Journeys

Out of my dialogue with the natural world, Creative Witness was born... a sacred practice of listening, creating, and communing with Spirit through mark-making, sensory meditation, and automatic writing.

I offer both group gatherings and one-on-one journeys, gently guiding others into sacred spaces where Nature, Spirit, and Self may speak freely once more.

Current offerings include:

• Magical Being (Inner Child Women’s Circle)

• Creative Witness Full Moon Circles (via Zoom)

• Creative Witness 12-Week One-on-One Journey (via Zoom, available worldwide, limited spaces)

➔ You are welcome to explore Creative Witness offerings here.

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✨ 3. Essence Natura: Earth and Sky Elixirs

From this same sacred relationship with the land, Essence Natura was born: Earth and Sky elixirs crafted in communion with nature beings and elemental forces.

Each alchemic essence carries the subtle energies of Rotorua’s landscape.
One by one, they call to me from the paths I walk: Dandelion, Honeysuckle, Magnolia, Oxalis, Bergamot; each created to support healing, presence, and spiritual remembering.

Although only a small number of essences will be available at launch, the energetic architecture of Essence Natura is already woven:
a five-petalled lotus carrying the energy of a pentacle, guarded by five elemental allies, and held within a Sacred Grove of thirteen tree spirits.

➔ You are invited to explore Essence Natura offerings here.

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🌸 Reflections from my open heART

Though I have been active in the arts community for many years: busking on the streets of Rotorua, leading fashion teams, face painting fairy faces, crafting bespoke gifts, mentoring, and creating for the community, I now stand before you anew.

I am The Art Alchemist:
a weaver of experiences, a maker of sacred spaces, and a co-creator with the living world.

This relaunch marks another sacred beginning: one chosen with full sovereignty:
a letting go of what no longer serves, and a claiming of the path that fills my soul, nourishes my spirit, and overflows into the wider circle of life.

With deep gratitude and anticipation, I extend my hand to you:
to walk alongside me,
to listen, to create, to wonder together.

Let us see what magic unfolds when kindred souls gather, held by the Earth, the stars, and the infinite breath of the Universe itself.

Aroha Mutunga Kore ;  Love eternally,
Karen

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