KATINKA KVALE

ARTIST BIO

Katinka is a multidisciplinary artist working across photography, printmaking, and mixed media, with a practice rooted in curiosity and material exploration. Born in Amsterdam and now based in Norway, her artistic language has developed through a long engagement with craft, structure, and surface.

Her formal background is in weaving, design, and ceramics, disciplines she once combined to create tactile objects—both sculptural and functional—defined by texture and physical presence. After many years of teaching and working in her own studio, her focus has shifted toward lens-based and two-dimensional work. The sensibility of the hand remains central, carried forward through experimental printmaking, layered hand prints, and photography that emphasizes structure, rhythm, and botanical form.

Nature is a constant source of inspiration and appears in nearly every image. She is especially drawn to moments of decay and transformation in plants, animals, and insects, where fragility and resilience coexist. These transitional states offer a rich visual language of texture, pattern, and quiet tension between the living and the dead.

Her process is deliberately slow and analog. Digital manipulation is minimal, and AI is not used. Light functions as a primary material, with sunlight often employed for analog double exposures. This hands-on approach reinforces a physical, intuitive relationship with both subject and medium.


ARTIST STATEMENT

My work consist of several layers printed techniques, including mono/series print, photos, and textiles. I use mixed media collage, glue and scissors to create intricate compositions and patterns. I also use double exposures both digital and analogue to incorporate depth and interest in my pieces. I work with great care and craft each layer to ensure transparency and texture.

As ceramist I control the 4 elements earth, water, air and fire to achieve a finished product. I use the same 4 elements in my prints and photographs in a metaphorical meaning. In many pictures I work with botanical elements as in a deeper meaning of decay and a process of decomposition. Nature gives and takes and renews to other and new dimensions.

I try in a subtle and imaginary way to show my environmental engagement and aim to challenge our collective awareness of these issues through photo. I wish to evolve lines from art to the heart. I use both analogue and digital double exposure techniques to visualize my project. I'm inspired of working “hand-on” and crafting prints to fit the photographs, or the other way round. I find this a very appropriate approach to visualize my art.

My mono-prints are hand-printed on raw, organic cotton, using acrylics, inks, charcoal, pastels and fabric paint. I also use cyanotype, anthotype, and often prints of red- and black-listed species. My composed photos are finally manufactured professionally on raw cotton/canvas.

I stretch my raw canvas on the frame by hand to present and arrange a translucent fabric in front, as to achieve an appearance of analogue double, double exposure and create an even deeper visual narrative. Working myself back to more and more use of textiles, with a feature towards 3 dimensional work.

Together, the prints on canvas and the prints on the translucent fabric tell the story of my ongoing project. By mounting the translucent fabric in front of different canvases, new narratives appear. Like a dollhouse with different scenes and interior or a paper doll with different cloth-hangings. I use the symbolism of a world in chaos, with for instance fish in the sky and birds under water.