Bianca Berends

Bianca Berends

Bright, sun-soaked portraits are Bianca Berends’s specialty, characterized by her bold brushstrokes, inventive backgrounds, and strong uses of color. She is continually inspired by scenes from everyday life, especially the innocence of playing children. A fascination with the play of light and shadow permeates through her paintings, as reflections of sun, sea and sand bounce and glow across the youthful figures.

These paintings of children are part of her Beach Life series, an ongoing project which sees the portraits combined with abstract backgrounds, collage elements, and enlarged prints of vintage postcards. although working mostly with oils and pressed oil on canvas, Beach Life has seen her experimenting more with different materials and techniques such as using glass plates to print paint on paper, using the back of brushes, plastic wrappers, and scrapers over paint to create texture.

Born in the Netherlands, Berends has had a life of travel and currently lives on the Caribbean island of Curaçao, where she works from her home studio. She has been recognized by The Portrait Society of America as one of today’s leading artists, and her paintings have been exhibited in well-known museums and galleries in Canada, The Netherlands, and the UK, including as part of the prestigious BP Portrait award.