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Kathy Karlson is just as adept at putting pen to paper as she is putting brush to canvas. If you ask her, the two activities aren't that different.

"When you get to make things and use your creative powers, it expresses your soul," said Karlson, a University Park resident. "It's a way of trying to mirror the beauty that you see in the world."

Karlson, 62, is both an accomplished artist and fiction writer. Her paintings have appeared in more than 40 private collections, and her writing — for which she was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts grant in 1998 — has been featured in literary journals such as the Madison Review and The MacGuffin.

One of her paintings is on display in the Greenbelt Community Center's gallery through Sept. 18. Karlson paints mainly from her studio at the center, which is filled with as many as 100 canvas paintings of her works, each vividly colorful yet unique.

"I like a lot of my paintings," she said. "If I don't like them, I throw them away."

Karlson grew up surrounded by art. The horizontal lines and "landscape-like" appearance in much of her work, she said, are subconsciously influenced by years of prairie living in her native Rochester, Minn.

Another way for Karlson to express herself was to enter the Peace Corps. From 1969 to 1971, she taught English — and occasionally art — to students in Togo, a mostly French-speaking nation in West Africa.

"You go to a world that's very different from your own and you then begin to question the assumptions you have about life," said Karlson. "You're enriched by differences."

She and her husband, John Perhonis, moved to Maryland in 1978 after they finished graduate school at the University of Minnesota. Karlson went to work for the Government Accountability Office in Washington, D.C., where she spent 28 years before retiring in 2007.

As one of eight artists in residence at the Greenbelt Community Center, she rents the space at a discounted rate. In return, she lets visitors tour her workspace once a month and hosts an annual children's art program and participates in monthly children's art activities.

"Her work, to me, really matches her personality," said fellow artist in residence Sherill Anne Gross. "She has a good approach with color and form ... There's something very comforting about her work."

While Karlson has replaced her fiction writing with poetry in recent years, she continues to paint prolifically. The community center, she said, gives her the opportunity to connect with local residents while pursuing her lifelong passion.

"People can come over and see [our] work, and there's always a program for kids," she said. "We give back to the community, which has given us a lot."

E-mail David Hill at dhill@gazette.net.