Looking Back: Art Rotterdam 2026

Fields of Colour: four artists, four distinct approaches to painting.

At Art Rotterdam 2026, Root Gallery presented paintings by Lisette Schumacher, Donald Schenkel, Vera Klaus and Karen van de Vliet. Their work offered four distinct ways of approaching the painted image: through the perception of architecture and light, the suggestion of space, the rhythm of gesture and the physical presence of paint.

The presentation brought these approaches together around a shared question: how does an image take shape? Across the works, colour did more than describe what is already there. It could alter the perception of a structure, draw the eye into a painted field, build a composition or bring the surface of a painting into focus.

Root Gallery’s Fields of Colour presentation at Art Rotterdam 2026, with paintings by Lisette Schumacher, Donald Schenkel, Vera Klaus and Karen van de Vliet.

Colour as a way of constructing an image

Schumacher’s paintings draw on the changing perception of architecture and light. Her work invites attention to how a structure may shift as light and colour change our view of it. The image is not simply a fixed record of a place; it develops through the way its forms are perceived.

Schenkel’s paintings begin with the physical behaviour of oil paint. Carefully developed colour transitions suggest depth and space, though they do not describe a particular location. The viewer is drawn into a space that remains open and unlocated. Here, the movement between colours gives the image its sense of distance.

Klaus builds rhythmic, layered compositions through intuitive gestures. Her paintings hold the traces of those gestures within their structure: each layer contributes to a composition that feels accumulated and in motion. Colour helps establish that rhythm, guiding the eye across the surface without settling into a single, fixed reading.

In Van de Vliet’s newest series, thick, hand-applied paint extends over the canvas edges and frame. The painted image reaches beyond its conventional boundary, making the limits of the work visible. Attention moves between the composition and the material surface that carries it.

The works were brought together so that these differences could be seen across the presentation. Colour moves through each practice differently: it creates atmosphere, suggests space, carries movement or makes the painted surface itself more tangible. Seen alongside one another, the paintings made clear that colour can shape an image in ways that are both visual and physical.

At Art Rotterdam

Art Rotterdam drew around 30,000 visitors. We were pleased by the thoughtful responses to the paintings and by the conversations they prompted throughout the fair. Visitors spent time with works that reward close looking, from Schenkel’s gradual transitions to the visible layers and gestures in the paintings by Klaus and Van de Vliet.

Karen van de Vliet’s paintings were nearly sold out by the end of the fair. It was encouraging to see such a strong response to her work, and to the different ways painting can hold attention through colour, composition and surface.

Thank you to everyone who visited Root Gallery at Art Rotterdam 2026 and spent time with the presentation.