Karin Vermeer

Karin Vermeer, an independent artist from Rotterdam, specializes in fashion and women’s portraits. Born in Tilburg in 1970, she attended the Fashion School before being admitted to the Willem de Kooning Academy in 1990. She obtained her degree in Illustration in 1994. After working as a freelance illustrator and decorator for several years, she decided to focus on making paintings. Karin’s fascination with fashion and women’s portraits started at an early age when she became intrigued by the way models were depicted in glossies. She was both impressed by the beautiful images and disturbed by the unrealistic manipulation of photos. As a result, she developed an interest in digitally and manually editing photos.

Karin is known for her portraits of women, but has also added landscapes to her repertoire in recent years. During her travels she takes photos that form the basis for these works. The technique is similar to her portraits, but goes a step further. The structures she applies to the photos are coarser and the works are painted in more detail. The basis for her work is always a manipulated photo edited in Photoshop. This is then glued to the canvas, after which many layers of gel medium are applied to create structure. The work is then painted with oil paint. This creates unique works with rough textures and a kind of 3D effect.