BIO
Carmen de Klerk is a contemporary artist based in Central Canada. Her work captures nature’s meditative movements through gestural mark making, washed tones, and hues with an emphasis on depicting the artwork’s process over the finished result.
True things happen in the process.
Her work ranges from small studies to larger panels- a collection of subconscious, and conscious thoughts and feelings, that are primarily driven by the way she experiences the world visually.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I believe beauty asks us to pay attention.
I have always been drawn to the quiet language of the natural world—the movement of water, wind moving through grasses, shifting light, reflections, distant horizons, the changing colours of the landscape.
Painting has become a practice of paying attention.
I don’t paint nature simply to reproduce a place. I paint because there is something about the natural world that invites me to slow down and look more closely. I’m interested in the experience of being there—the stillness, movement, atmosphere and sense of wonder that can arise when we become quiet enough to notice.
For me, beauty has always pointed beyond itself. It reminds me that there is something larger than myself, and ultimately, of the Creator behind it all.
My studio practice is therefore both an act of observation and an act of gratitude.
I paint what catches my attention. What draws me closer. What makes me wonder.
I hope the paintings offer that same invitation to others: to pause, to notice, to feel, and perhaps to become aware of something beyond what is immediately seen.
The painting is not meant to tell you what to see. It is an invitation to look.
