KATRIEN KERMANS

FIGURATIVE AND

LANDSCAPE PAINTER

Katrien Kermans (1974) lives and grew up in Schoten. After her training as a fashion designer (at the art academy in Antwerp, among other places), she spent several years studying painting at the academies in Schoten and Brasschaat. In addition, she regularly attends live and online training courses by leading artists, as a result of which the techniques she uses in her work are constantly evolving. One of her great examples when it comes to drawing and painting the human body is the American painter/sculptor Robert Liberace, who has taught her many insights in that area.

TECHNIQUES OF THE OLD MASTERS

Katrien has a fascination for 'old masters' like Rubens and Van Dijck and for contemporary artists like Borremans and Cesar Santos. The combination of her training as a fashion designer and the aforementioned role models means that the human figure and portraits are popular themes for her paintings. For the subject matter, she often looks for inspiration in people from her immediate surroundings, whom she then styles and places in a setting according to the intended image she wants to create.

OIL COLOURS AND ALTERNATIVE MATERIALS

It will not surprise you that Katrien works according to the old methods with oil paint on linen. She likes to use recycled materials as "support" for the canvas. This gives her the space to experiment with free formats and materials for the canvas support.

Her constant striving to shift boundaries, both professionally and in terms of subject matter, results in diverse images. Sometimes they are very intimate, sober figures and sometimes the passion for extravagant fashion and historical costumes predominate. But people, naked and dressed, are and remain an inexhaustible source of inspiration to her.

Although the figurative can be seen as a thread throughout her works, landscapes are also a favourite domain, because they allow for experimentation with the combination of classic painting techniques and alternative materials such as charcoal, oil pastels, etc.

An artist's hunger is never satisfied and passion cannot be suppressed. Under this motto, Katrien keeps developing herself as a painter and continues her self-willed journey in search of a symbiosis of her favourite subjects in a melting pot between the techniques of the 'masters' and experimental techniques.