Lilies

SANDRINE KERN is a French-born artist whose atmospheric, memory-driven abstract paintings evoke emotion and memory. Raised in Paris, Kern began studying art at the age of seven and later earned her MFA with honors in painting and drawing from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. Kern’s paintings are deeply informed by memory and emotional flashbacks, functioning less as depictions of nature and more as poetic meditations on mood and perception. As Kern explains, “It’s more about how I feel when I walk into a space, it’s something deeper than what you see—it’s what you feel.”

After relocating to the United States, Kern began to cultivate her distinctive style. While initially focused on richly layered abstract compositions, she noticed that images of water lilies started to surface naturally through her exploration of lines and shapes. The water lily soon became a recurring motif—less a literal subject than a means to investigate light, movement, and spatial ambiguity. Kern works primarily with cold wax, a medium she favors for its creamy, tactile quality. Through her process of layering, scraping, and dissolving pigments, she allows forms to emerge intuitively, blurring the line between abstraction and representation.

Sandrine Kern lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Kern exhibits nationally including at Somerville Manning Gallery, Greenville, DE, William Shearburn Gallery, St Louis, MO, Nikola Rukaj Gallery, Toronto, Canada and Gail Harvey Gallery, Santa Monica, CA., among others. Kern was elected for membership of the Foundation Taylor in Paris, France in June 2016. Her work is to be found in numerous private collections including The Mitchell Collection, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, David Schwimmer, and Lisa Kudrow.