Dutch artist Katinka Lampe paints portraits. Or at least, you can clearly recognise the representation of a person. The portrait is the imagery concept. Conscientiously and with a great sense for beauty she portrays her models, who are generally quite young. The resulting portrait is not an exact copy of reality, but instead a visual impression of it.
By including things like a wig or a balaclava or putting a lot of make-up on the model’s mouth, she adds an unusual or artificial character to her portraits. Lampe’s work is both vulnerable and distant at the same time. She wants to avoid all that is personal in her art and she gives her works neither titles nor names. Lampe is constantly searching for the right proportion between content and paint, realism and abstraction.
The combination of various painting techniques is typical of her paintings. Big colour areas and minutely painted details, sharp contrasts and soft outlines alternate in her work. Lampe wants to create an “image that is stout yet moving”.
Lampe thus manages to create tension in her work. She adds false lashes, big jewellery and headscarves; objects with social and cultural connotations that somehow clash with the youthful innocence of her models. Therefore her paintings both attract and push off at the same time.
Images courtesy of Katinka Lampe
Discover: www.katinkalampe.nl
