There are two strands to Karin's work; Animal portraiture and secondly, her belief that humanity is connected by invisible threads; cultures emerge from other cultures and weave in and out over centuries and she wants her watercolours to reflect this story. Thus she will take a Byzantine head of Medusa, inspired by Greek history and combine it with a William Morris design; Morris himself took a much of his influence from the work of Indian miniature artists working at the court of Jahangir. Therefore, she creates a new fusion based on four threads from different times and places creating a 5th element. She has enlisted otherworldly sphnyx cats, whose alien appearance makes them 'other' in every situation, to engage with the viewer and the histories. Cats have walked between worlds, and strolled through and influenced myriad cultures over centuries. She said 'I have a feeling that they know and see what we don't, it is for the viewer to puzzle out their thoughts and intentions.'

Karin's 20 years travelling the world with watercolours in her suitcase has lead her to this point. She now lives up a mountain in France with 12 cats and a frenchman. Originally from Portsmouth in the UK, she trained as a graphic designer, but always had a hankering to be a fine artist. Her love of travel and the art and architecture of cultures other than her own led her to take a degree at SOAS studying Asian and African art History and Archaeology, this was a springboard to living and working in Asia and the Middle East. She has lived in Cambodia, Saudi, Azerbaijan, Palestine, East Timor, Burma and now France, always the outsider looking into other ways of being, she is the cat now depicted in her art.

Since 'settling down' she has concentrated on exploring watercolour techniques for depicting animals in a realistic manner, though I have a suspicion that this will evolve into something more evocative of their individual characters over time, she has also expressed a hankering to explore mixed media combining watercolours with pencil work to capture this.