Karin Eklund’s paintings come from another place: a sepia-tinged otherworld where children play amid the thin streaks of oil paint, disappearing into the black depths of a Renaissance forest or balancing between murky pools of flat and impenetrable water. A certain unease penetrates the scenes, which are difficult to date. They could have been made at any time, from the 18th century to the present day, yet the vernacular is Scandinavian. Eklund studied on the Children’s Book illustration MA at Anglia Ruskin before becoming an artist, and has published several books, and as a result there is a sense of a larger narrative in her pictures. Folk tales emerge in times of upheaval, as a way of giving voice to our fears, Eklund’s paintings have a similar benign intention – to illustrate our futile attempts to place ourselves in the world, the results suggest we only have our fragmentary memories to rely on.
Text by Jessica Lack, 2019.
To arrange a studio visit or to buy a painting please contact Karin on . Her studio is near Milton Country Park in Cambridge.
