Karen Canner Moss

Karen Canner Moss, a stalwart of the Boston art world for fifty years, died on July 1 in Brookline after a protracted battle with cancer. She was eighty-two years old.

Karen was born in Boston to Leonard and Norma (Green) Canner in 1944. After spending her early years in Toledo, Ohio, she returned to New England to complete a BFA at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1966, and an MFA at Tufts University and the Boston Museum School in 1974.

During the long professional career in art that followed, Karen’s painting focused on issues as diverse as the interaction between human and animal worlds, Victorian explorers and naturalists, the changing nature of childhood, incarceration in the United States, and most recently, the spaces people created for themselves during the Covid-19 pandemic and the issue of banned books.

A keen social and environmental consciousness informed all of her work, which received multiple awards and honors, was shown in solo and group exhibitions across the country, and featured in both local and national media outlets covering the arts.

Her most recent exhibitions were Portraits: Personal Spaces at Gallery Kayafas in 2024, and We Read Banned Books! at the Boston Public Library in 2025. In an interview with WGBH on the banned books project, Karen stated that “Freedom to read whatever you want is critical in a democracy. I was frightened by the idea that book-banning was happening here, and it’s happened throughout history from time to time. But it’s shocking the degree to which it started happening here and the way it started and the way it caught on. And so that’s what led me to focus on this now.”

Karen is survived by her husband Dennis Livingston, brother Barry Canner, son Jonah Livingston, daughter-in-law Ellie Livingston, grandchildren Nomi and Ripley Livingston, and stepdaughter Melissa Demian.

A funeral service will be held at 1:00 PM on Thursday, July 18 at Levine Chapels, 470 Harvard Street, Brookline, Massachusetts. An interment will take place at 12:00 PM on Friday, July 19 at Cedar Brook Burial Ground, 175 Boothby Road, Limington, Maine.

In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made to Rosie’s Place (https://www.rosiesplace.org/).