About the Artist

Painting begins for me with attention — to a place, a colour, a movement, or something that stays in memory.

Contemparary artist Daniela Knobel, standing in front of colorful landscape paintings on a gallery wall. In another part of the image, she is standing next to an easel, possibly in the same art gallery.

I’m Daniela Knobel, a contemporary abstract painter based in the Netherlands. My work grows from things that stay with me — fragments of landscape, colour, movement and atmosphere, sometimes long after the original experience has passed.

Painting has been part of my life since childhood. What began as a personal and intuitive way of making gradually developed into the artistic practice I have today.

I rarely set out to reproduce what I have seen. Instead, I bring these impressions into the studio and allow them to change through painting. Recognition may remain, disappear and return as the work develops.

What interests me is the moment when a painting begins to move beyond its starting point. A remembered landscape can become a rhythm of marks; a colour can redirect an entire composition. I work intuitively, responding to what appears on the surface rather than following a predetermined image.

Between recognition and abstraction

My paintings often remain somewhere between the recognisable and the open-ended. Landscape may still be present, but not necessarily as a place that can be identified. It can surface as a horizon, a fragment of water, a cluster of lines or simply a sense of space.

I want the work to leave room for the viewer. Rather than fixing a single meaning, the paintings invite a slower kind of looking — allowing associations and interpretations to emerge over time.

Three photos of contemporary artist Daniela Knobel painting large landscape artworks on canvases indoors. She is focused on her paintings, which depict natural scenery such as mountains, water, trees, and sky.

Process and Material

My paintings are built through layers. I add, cover, scrape back, draw into the surface and return to earlier areas, allowing traces of previous decisions to remain visible. One painting often influences another, and I regularly work on several pieces at the same time.

I work primarily with acrylic paint, acrylic ink, charcoal and pastel on canvas and paper. Materials are not simply a means of execution: their behaviour can shift the direction of a painting and open possibilities I had not planned.

Discover more

Explore the different strands of my work in the Studio, or view a curated selection of currently available paintings in Current Selection.

If a particular work elsewhere on the website interests you, you’re welcome to contact me for availability, dimensions or pricing.

Gallery and curatorial inquiries are welcome.

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