Curated by karien deroo

Sint-Laureins, Flanders East, Belgium

Karien Deroo lives and works in Sint-Laureins, a small village between Bruges and Ghent, Belgium.

After several years of working in the field of graphic design and illustration, Karien Deroo quit her day job to pursue her childhood passion for painting.
In the mean time, she studied graphics and etching, but when she began to miss colors, she started to paint, in an autodidactic way, inspired by the classical tradition of the old masters, but working on a distinctive figurative style who has a strongly contemporary and timeless perspective.
Her technique is mainly oil on linen canvas and her quest is to seek out the human soul in her art work.

The search for the soul of human beings:
I’m always looking for the soul in human beings (and also in animals, but that’s more difficult). When I look at people and when I talk and listen to them, I want to reach their souls, to leave the surface behind and go deeper to find their inner beauty. Since I usually paint portraits, I always search for images of people who have a very silent expression on their faces and in their attitudes. They are in their inner world, looking out with direct stares, or looking away, dreamily captured in their own world. You don’t know what they’re thinking and it’s in this moment, I believe, that you can see their soul and make a connection with your own soul. I want people to have a connection with my paintings, through their soul.

Karien Deroo's greatest influences are Rembrandt, Velasquez, Van Dyck, Caravaggio, and John Singer Sargent...

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Categories: Painting, Drawing, Photography, Assemblage / Collage, Digital, Printmaking