Charlotte Clausen b. 1969
Education:
Funen Art Academy. DK 1994-99
Master of fine Arts
Member of BKF, Danish Visual Artists
Contact:
+45 26 70 20 03
charl8clausen@gmail.com
I graduated from the Funen Art Academy in Denmark, and my artistic practice today revolves around printmaking, drawing, painting – and more recently, ceramics. Alongside my own work, I also teach visual art and printmaking techniques, with a strong focus on process-based, tactile creation.
In recent years, much of my inspiration has come from the natural world – especially the quiet complexity of insects and plants. I’ve been particularly drawn to the 17th-century etchings of Maria Sibylla Merian, whose groundbreaking studies of insects and their host plants in Surinam (1699–1701) challenged the beliefs of her time. Back then, many still thought insects emerged from mud — seen as dark, even diabolical creatures, rather than essential parts of life’s cycles. Merian’s work, both scientific and artistic, continues to fascinate me.
Historically, flower motifs have been socially accepted subjects for women artists – a fact that made me, for many years, hesitant to use them myself. As a feminist artist, I felt the need to resist such inherited expectations.
But after losing my mother, one of the last things she told me was how deeply she loved flowers. That moment changed my relationship with the motif. Today, I embrace it — not only as a tribute to her, but also to the beauty and intelligence of nature itself, and to women like Merian, who refused to stay within the lines drawn for them. Through this lens, my work celebrates both fragility and strength: the delicate structures of plants and insects, and their essential place in the ecosystems we too often overlook.
Previously participated in various group exhibitions at :
- Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen. DK
- Art Museum Brandts, DK
- Funen Art Museum, DK
- Randers Art Museum, DK
- DFKU ( Fynen Art Academy exhibition room ) DK,
- Toldboden, DK .
- Filosofgangen, DK
- Gallery Peblinc
- Gallery I-N-K
- Gallery DAMP
- Gallery Hesede Hovedgård
- Kits Contemporary
Affiliations & Collections
Co-founder and former member of the art collective Pussy Power
Work acquired by ARoS Aarhus Art Museum PP
Selected to represent Denmark at Germinations - by DCB for Germinations, European Projekt for Young Artist. 1999
Flower motifs have been socially accepted among female artists for centuries. Due to this, I have personally resisted working with flower motifs as a female/feminist artist, feeling that I should distance myself from this motif because it has been imposed upon us through generations. However, when I lost my mother, one of the very last things she told me was how much she absolutely loved flowers. So now, years later, I have embraced this motif as a tribute to both her and an extraordinary courageous and talented woman who was too curious to "settle" for painting flowers alone. But it is also a tribute to the beauty of nature and the crucial role insects play in the ecosystems.
inspiration from Maria Sibylla Merian's etchings from the 17th century.
I have long been captivated by her work—by the quiet courage it took to leave the familiar behind and journey to the lush, untamed landscapes of Surinam between 1699 and 1701. There, amid the heat and humming life of the tropics, she turned her gaze to the smallest of creatures: insects, and the plants that nurtured them.
In an age when such beings were thought to crawl forth from the mud as if by magic—or worse, as if conjured by darkness—she saw instead a world of delicate cycles and silent transformation. While others dismissed insects as the devil’s work, she watched them with reverence, tracing their metamorphosis with the eye of an artist and the soul of a scientist.
