Karin Luck

When nature calls

Karin Lykke paints with great love for nature. Sensitive and powerful at the same time, mainly in liquid pigments – and preferably in large formats. The sky, the sea, the mountains, the birds, freedom, strength and vulnerability speak to her brushes and tools. There is a message she wants to pass on.

The joy of nature has always been there. From when she set off on horseback or cross-country skiing in South Zealand, to discovering the Nordic landscapes of Lofoten as a child – and up until today, where she lives in the scenic Odsherred. However, you will be looking in vain if you expect to find idyll, light green beech trees and yellow rapeseed fields in Karin Lykke's works. She does not seek superficial beauty, but a different kind of beauty and delight in strokes and structures, in grand landscapes or zoomed in on feathers, insects and eggshells, as well as the ephemerality of dead animals and plants in fascinating decay.

Karin Lykke explores what both the motif and the color pigments can withstand in washing processes carried out with water both indoors and outdoors. She experiments with opacity, light and transparency, paints and draws with marker pens and incorporates negative prints in cyanotype into her visual world.

Her works are characterized by a strict, almost monochrome color scheme, inspired partly by her travels in Northern Norway and Iceland and partly by her foothold in the graphic universe. Shapes and patterns are also transferred to graphics and ceramic objects.

Karin Lykke is a trained graphic designer from the Danish Academy of Fine Arts School of Architecture in Copenhagen.
Alongside her artistic practice, she runs courses and teaches – and exhibits at home and abroad.