Karen Blair loved to paint pictures on the cardboard that the laundry put in her dad’s starched shirts when she was a kid in Winston-Salem, N.C. Later, she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting and printmaking from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Then zilch!

“I didn’t have enough confidence to continue,“ Blair, now 54, confides amid her solo exhibition at Page Bond Gallery.

The show’s 21 landscape paintings belie her at every turn.

They’re robust, colorful and bold.

They exude self-confidence.

They swagger.

Many of the subjects are familiar Richmond scenes—the skyline, the James River at sunrise, a stand of trees in Lakeside, an interstate ramp, a railway bridge, downtown buildings galore—but their beguiling blend of impressionist and expressionist impulses makes them seem fresh.

Blair’s current outing is her second solo show—the first was four years ago at Gallery 5800—but she’s already become a darling of Richmond-area corporate collectors such as Capital One, Philip Morris, Markel Corp. and Owens & Minor.

“The size alone sells her work,“ gallery owner Page Bond says. “These corporations have big walls to fill, and Karen’s not afraid to tackle large canvases. Her paintings fill another need, too. They show the places where so many Richmonders work. She’s not afraid of architecture and industrial scenes. Her work is big, beefy and gutsy.“

The beefiest of all is a landscape opus, 21 feet wide and 5 feet high, that hangs in three panels in Richmond’s Troutman Saunders law firm.

“It was so big I had to extend the canvas through the opening between the two rooms of my studio in my house in the Fan,“ Blair says.

Where did this Michelangelo-size ambition come from?

A year after graduating from UNC-G, Blair moved to Richmond and became a runway model at Montaldo’s, the long-gone high-fashion mecca.

No wonder.

She stands a willowy 5-foot-11 and volunteers her weight—129 pounds—without being asked.

She stands out, on the runway and off, and eventually became a Montaldo’s assistant manager.

Meanwhile, she was rearing three children.

“I always had the itch to paint,“ she says, “but I loved having babies and being a mother. In the back of my head, I knew that when I started painting again, it would consume me.

“And it has, absolutely. I can’t NOT do it. I wake up every day and know why God put me on this Earth. I have a deep religious faith, and I believe we are meant to use the gifts God has given us, and I believe now that painting is the gift God has given me.

“The other factor is my age. I’m too old to wait for the muse. I can’t wait for lightning to strike. I have to do it now.“

The artistic reawakening began 10 years ago when Blair enrolled in a painting class in the Studio School at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. It continued with painting workshops and residencies in Virginia and Vermont.

“I go into the studio each morning and start painting,“ she says. “I put in about six good hours five days a week. If I take a day off during the week, then I paint on Sunday. It’s exhausting to maintain total concentration for six hours, but it’s also exhilarating.

“There’s a Zen-like feeling of being in the moment. I’m not aware of time passing. I’ll start painting, and I look up at the clock, and two hours have passed, and it feels like 10 minutes.

“I just paint. I try not to judge the work as I’m doing it. I let the canvases stack up and go back later and decide which are the keepers. I keep about 70 percent and paint over the rest.“

Blair was lured into landscape by the appeal of painting outside. She still paints her smaller canvases en plein air, but works on her larger pieces in the studio, often guided by photographs she has taken.

Her love affair with oil paint is total.

“It’s so seductive, the smell, the texture,“ she rhapsodizes. “If it wasn’t poisonous, I’d probably eat it.“

Is Blair making up for lost time?

“I felt my time raising my children was exactly what I should be doing during those years,“ she says, “and I feel painting is what I should be doing now.

“I have no regrets. I have a lot of confidence instead.“