Individual motifs often appear throughout her coherent series of works. Karen Holländer understands how to translate emotional states into the medium of painting, which can say far more than a purely documentary illustration would be capable of. The aesthetic of her pictorial compositions and reduced colour palette intensify the themes she addresses in her work and also document the inner beauty of the subjects themselves.

As a painter, Karen Holländer is a keen observer of everyday life. However, her gaze isn’t fixed on the surface of things, but tries to see beyond what is visible on the outside; in her work, she tries to make the world visible to us. With empathetic brushstrokes, displaying a sensory understanding of colour, light and mood, she tells us subtle stories. She is an artist who simply takes her surroundings very personally, and who uses the everyday objects she portrays as metaphors for certain conditions of human existence.