KAREN VAN OUTRYVE began her study of Aesthetic Realism with its founder Eli Siegel in 1968. She writes: “When I heard and began to study, ‘The resolution of conflict in self is like the making one of opposites in art,’ I felt this was the most important knowledge one could meet.  Is it possible for everyday life to have the meaning and beauty of a Chopin etude, a play of Shakespeare, a Van Gogh painting?  I learned that it is.

"Aesthetic Realism taught me to see reality, and the lives of other people, with depth and respect. That has not only made my life more meaningful and happy than I ever dreamed possible—it has also enabled me to be a true artist.”

A poet, consultant, and actress with The Aesthetic Realism Theatre Company, Karen Van Outryve is also married to architect Anthony C. Romeo, and they are the parents of Alessandra Romeo. As a family, they have always been active in both community and national concerns. They are founding members of Housing: a Basic Human Right, advocating a nationwide solution to hunger and homelessness. They attend St. John’s in the Village, where Alessandra is a Junior Singer in the Choir, and their writing on issues concerning public education has been published in various newspapers.

A member of the Alliance for Quality Education and New Yorkers for Smaller Class Size, Karen Van Outryve has been active in the fight to reduce the size of classes in New York City public schools and to have public schools receive adequate State and City funding. As part of the Green Team of the P.S. 41 PTA she wrote the grant application that secured funding from the NYU Community Fund for “Voyage Around the World,” a very successful intergenerational arts project that partnered the Greenwich Village Public School with senior volunteers from The Caring Community.

In public seminars, Ms. Van Outryve has discussed the poetry of Anna Hempstead Branch, Edith Sitwell and Sylvia Plath, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s verse novel, Aurora Leigh. She has also spoken, at Aesthetic Realism Dramatic Presentations, about Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, the Andante movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, and John Philip Sousa’s The Stars & Stripes Forever.

Karen Van Outryve is a member of the National Organization for Women, the Sierra Club, and the National and New York Civil Liberties Union.