Karin Bach: Beyond the perfect figure

By Signe Hansen | Photos: Karin Bach

With a background in design and extensive experience rendering polished female figures, Danish painter Karin Bach spent years trying to loosen the discipline. Then a serious traffic accident changed the course of her working life and later, a television appearance brought her art to a wider audience. Today, her colourful, semi-abstract paintings explore the human form – most recently through her new series, Fathers of the World.

Karin Bach’s paintings often begin with colour rather than a figure. She builds an abstract background first, then allows a body or face to emerge from the layers, drawing on life studies and photographs as she works. “I keep thinking that it mustn’t become too polished,” she says. “I want it to be raw, layered and expressive. What matters to me is catching the right atmosphere and expression.”

The result sits between abstraction and figuration. Bodies remain recognisable, while faces often carry the quieter, more melancholic moods that draw Bach in. For years, that ability also made Bach a sought-after portrait painter. Today, however, she takes on far fewer commissions, preferring work that gives her greater freedom to explore the human form.

Galleri Bach: Beyond the perfect figure

Learning to let go

That search for freedom began with a disciplined foundation. Bach trained at the Danish Design School, where life drawing and the body were central to her education. “I was formally trained and could draw and paint these stylish female figures,” she says. “But I felt it could become too neat.”

Galleri Bach: Beyond the perfect figure

She began taking local oil-painting classes and experimenting with ways of loosening her technique. Then, in 2007, a serious motorway accident left her with a skull fracture and brain trauma. After more than six months away from work, she eventually reduced her hours as a graphic designer and began painting more seriously. “I found my peace and quiet in painting,” she says. “Standing there with a painting and simply disappearing into it became completely meditative for me.”

Another turning point came in 2019, when Bach entered the television competition Danmarks bedste portrætmaler (Denmark’s best portrait painter). Nervous enough to consider withdrawing after being accepted, she stayed and reached the final at Copenhagen’s Glyptotek. Afterwards, the exposure brought a surge of portrait commissions. “I was contacted by so many people,” she recalls. “I spent the following year painting portraits.”

Artist Karin Bach has won praise and recognition for her portrayals and explorations of the human form.

Mood before likeness

Although television brought recognition through portraiture, Bach’s wider work has continued moving towards a freer expression. She is particularly drawn to people who seem to carry traces of life’s darker experiences, which helps explain the quiet melancholy running through many of her figures. “I never really paint someone smiling and laughing,” she says. “I like it when the viewer wonders what has happened to her, or why she looks sad.”

Reaching that expression is often a slow process. Bach works patiently in layers, using broad brushes and palette knives to build a raw, rustic surface that deliberately pushes against the polished technique of her design training.

Galleri Bach: Beyond the perfect figure

Fatherly love

That interest in human emotion has recently taken Bach in a new direction. After becoming a grandmother and watching her son-in-law care for his baby, she began thinking about fathers more broadly. The result is Fathers of the World, a series portraying fathers and children across different settings and cultures, recently exhibited at CPH Art Space at Docken. “The love and care you have for your child is probably the same wherever you are in the world and whatever social background you come from,” she says.

Karin Bach’s art series Alle Verdens Fædre (The Fathers of the World) was inspired by her own son-in-law.

The series has also drawn attention for the intimacy Bach brings to the subject. In a review, Tom Jørgensen, editor of Kunstavisen and former art critic at the newspaper Jyllands-Posten, describes the paintings as “fresh and immediate,” while highlighting the empathy behind Bach’s portrayals of fathers absorbed in moments of closeness with their children. For Jørgensen, it is this emotional engagement, rather than technical ability alone, that makes the works affecting.

Galleri Bach: Beyond the perfect figure

Painting into calm

Today, Bach works part-time as a graphic designer and paints from a small studio at home, exhibiting selectively in Denmark and through her Swedish gallerist Kabusa Art in Motions, who is currently exhibiting at the Qalops boutique and gallery in Österlen. Rather than returning to the commissioned portrait work that once filled her calendar, she is giving herself more room to follow colour, figures and mood.

The trained designer who once knew exactly how to draw stylish ladies is still there – but Bach is now far more interested in what happens when she lets the painting move somewhere less predictable.

Galleri Bach: Beyond the perfect figure