Peggy Kuiper

b. Haarlem, Netherlands, 1986

Peggy Kuiper is a Dutch artist whose paintings feature a cast of creatures, figurative but not entirely human, suspended in luminous layers of acrylic. Kuiper’s earthy and jewel-like palette derives from the natural world and seasonal changes, though her subject matter is entirely invented. Hunched, gathered, multi-headed, and contorted, her figures are rendered in sharply delineated areas of color and segmented organic forms, evoking masked spirits and deriving from early explorations of the figure during her childhood. After pursuing graphic design and photography, Kuiper returned to tactile art-making in her thirties, and imagines the resulting images as embodiments of her emotional landscape. She simultaneously draws upon art historical approaches to figuration by artists such as Marlene Dumas, Amedeo Modigliani, and Paul Gaugin. Her compositions display similar qualities of flatness, fragmentation, and an internal glow.

In 2010, Kuiper Graduated from St. Joost College of Art & Design with a degree in Graphic Design. She trained under the prolific Dutch graphic designer Anthon Beeke, before pursuing photography and eventually turning entirely to painting in 2019. She lives and works in Amsterdam.