Karen Strang graduated in Drawing and Painting from Glasgow School of Art. After receiving the Newbery Medal and the Sir William Gillies Travelling Scholarship amongst other awards, she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, during a tumultuous political period in the mid 1980s which led Strang to working in installation and performance after seeing Tadeusz Kantor.

Returning to painting in recent years, but steeped in all these influences, Strang explores expressive figuration outlining the human condition whilst utilising aspects of archetypes found in mythology and close observation of natural form.