The Boat
2021
Watercolor on canvas

Silke Otto-Knapp (b. 1970) was born in Osnabrück, Germany, and majored in cultural studies at the University of Hildesheim. She received her MFA from Chelsea College of Art and Design in London. Otto-Knapp works in the medium of watercolor on canvas, and produces landscape paintings as well as paintings based on historical documentations of stage design and performance. Unlike traditional watercolorists, Otto-Knapp applies layers of watercolor that are washed down and then applied anew. These countless coats produce the coexistence of conflicting concepts of space—surface and depth, contour and corporeality, distance and closeness, reality and figurativeness—which give rise to a tension between the motif and the picture surface.