Karen Woods paints the ordinary. Raindrops on a car windshield, lights reflected in their surfaces; stop signs in the dew; yellow road lines blurry through the rain. 

But to Woods, these are glimpses into a world that is anything but ordinary.

“It’s this little millisecond of life, … but it is to me kind of access to an eternal moment, and I want other people to be able to see it,” she said. “(I want) to share it, because that makes it complete, to share that joy.” 

Woods lives in Boise, Idaho, where she attends All Saints Presbyterian Church. She creates oil paintings featuring these glimpses of the suburban world.

“I thought I belonged in a more urban environment and resented [living in the suburbs] – until I started really noticing how beautiful parts of it are,” she said.

She started noticing how stop signs or traffic lights were backlit by the sun, and realized that by wishing she were somewhere else, she was missing what was right in front of her.

“The ordinary things that are right in front of me, to me that is how I express my faith,” she said. “This material world, I know it’s not all there is, but it matters. And it’s also signposts for what’s ahead. … That is just jaw-droppingly beautiful.”

Woods has been interested in art since childhood. In high school, she became “enamored” with architecture, convinced that this was a way to enjoy both art and a “good, stable profession.” 

But as soon as she began to study architecture, she knew better. She really just wanted to create art. 

Woods transferred to California College of the Arts in Oakland, California, and immediately felt at home.

“It was amazing, to be at a place where art was the most important thing,” she said. 

Shortly after she graduated, Woods got married and welcomed a son. Making art was no longer the most important thing, and initially she struggled with what to make of her artist identity.

For all the years she raised her son, Woods said she tried to channel her creativity into other things, keeping “a toe in the water” but letting go of her dream. Looking back, she wishes she could encourage her younger self to let go of her disappointment.

“I wish now I could go back and say, ‘Relax, you’ll get a chance to do it later and you’ll be coming at it with a more mature frame of mind,’” she said. 

Once her son began college, Woods returned to painting.

“In many ways it was just clear to me that God (is) the one in charge, and my job is just to work hard, to be obedient, and to follow where that goes,” she said. “It’s very much been a calling, and a calling that I kind of have to keep with an open hand.”

Woods now paints full time. She shares studio space with three other artists, with whom she’s worked for 17 years, and said they’ve “watched each other’s lives go by.”

She generally has several paintings going at once, not all of which have clear destinations. The various galleries that represent her have different preferences, she said. The one in New York likes small, intense cityscapes. The galleries in Nantucket and Florida like big, bold pieces. 

And Stephanie Wilde, the gallerist at Stewart Gallery in Boise, is always pushing her to try new things.

“She is always encouraging me to experiment and kind of step off the path a little — or a lot,” Woods said. “She’s been an encouragement.”

Woods said she collects ideas on drives, taking pictures with her phone. She prints out a stack whenever Walgreens has a sale, then sits on her floor to go through them.

“I look for that sense in me that there’s something here. I don’t quite know what it is,” she said.

Once she’s found one, she paints from the print rather than resize it. And as she paints she hopes to uncover what it is that first caught her attention about that print.

Sometimes it’s just a portion of a photo that she uses. Right now, she’s working from a photograph that’s 1 ½ inches by 3 inches; the finished painting will be 40 inches by 60 inches.

Scaling that significantly means mistakes, but Woods said she never sketches her designs before she paints. Other layers will correct the problems. It takes a long time to complete a painting, often months. And deciding when it’s done is part of the difficulty.

“I don’t always trust my own judgment,” she said. “That is the hardest thing because it’s possible to over-paint something and [hard to] know when to stop. So when I’m getting to that part when it’s close, I take it really slow and kind of double down and tread carefully.”

Woods said her art is a vocation, though some years it pays for itself and other years it doesn’t.

But it’s also a personal calling. “Most of the time I am in a total fog, or I’m thinking, ‘Why am I still doing the same thing after so long?’ And it’s true, I really do love it and I feel called to do it,” she said. 

What she’s called to is pointing viewers back to the wonder around them. 

“Part of the reason I paint is I want to point at that and say ‘Look at it, look at it, look at it!’ I want everybody to see how beautiful it is or how cool it is,” she said. “There is so much, there is just so much beauty to be had.”

Woods’ work is available at George Billis Gallery in New York City and Fairfield, Conn.; Quidley & Company Fine Art in Nantucket, Maine, and Naples, Fla.; Billis Williams Gallery in Los Angeles, Calif.; and Stewart Gallery in Boise. 

See more of Woods’ art on her website.