//about the artist

This text constitutes a compilation of excerpts from newspaper articles and other published sources, incorporating statements by gallerists and art critics.

Carolin Wehrmann is considered one of the world‘s most influencial contemporary painters of seascapes and aquatic scenes. Born in 1959 Germany she painted in oils for the first time at the age of 12. On graduating from Düsseldorf‘s Goethe Gymnasium she first studied law in Cologne, only to pursue her true passion three years on, when she switched to study graphic arts in Düsseldorf under Professor Kurt Wolff. She initially worked as an illustrator and later as an art director for an advertising agency in Düsseldorf, before finally following her true calling in the late 1980s, when she began her development as an independent artist.

Her glazing technique is the result, moreover, of profound knowledge of the use of pigments, oils and resins. By employing glazing she achieves this fascinating effect of depth in her latest variation of contemporary realism. The intricate nuancing of light and colour is what conveys to the observer the sheer exuberance of a world full of life and beauty, a pervading sense of atmosphere and infinite complexity.

For Carolin Wehrmann, the sea is an expression of her own quest for an ideal world and, transcendentally, of her longing to depict pristine, unspoiled nature. In her water pictures she expresses the primeval desire to represent clarity and purity. Her works reveal her own search for greater meaning in the subjects she approaches. At the same time, the artist wants to open the viewer‘s eyes to the beauty and perfection of creation.

Classics and Reflections - a dialogue: The artist has developed the genre of seascapes and the subject of water in an extraordinarily consistent and intense way. While the artworks of her early creative period were predominantly traditional, masterfully painted compositions of sky, horizon, water and shore, in the “Reflections” series she succeeds in significantly redefining the water motif. She breaks through the conventional boundaries between genres and in so doing creates her own, highly personal expression.

In the overall context of the artist‘s complete works, “Reflections” are not a shift in the artist‘s expression to which she has devoted herself to the exclusion of all else; rather, both the “classic” mode and the “Reflections” approach have their own, equally valid place in her work. They complement each other, they explain each other, they develop greater meaning through the dialogue they establish together.

In “Reflections”, a sample from nature is extracted from the whole and frees itself from time and space to become something approaching allegory, a symbol of timelessness. The viewer is led away from the here and now into a realm of deeper meaning and thus beyond the bounds of the painting. In this encounter we meet a pure, clear, unspoiled, primeval version of nature and, at the same time, a utopian ideal of the future. Thus the moving water in “Reflections” also stands symbolically for a sensory world of thinking and feeling in constant change and so introduces us to the modern philosophical understanding of art and the world.

Moreover “Reflections” also open our eyes to the transcendent, spiritual world. We see heaven in the water, a flash of light as a premonition and all dimensions of existence in one: the seabed, the land, hence the earthly planet, above it the water as a sign of mutability and all that is living. In the water appears that which outshines everything terrestrial: the heavens and the sun as a metaphor for the other-worldly, the transcendental.

Hence Carolin Wehrmann‘s “Reflections” convey all dimensions of existence concurrently and links them to a utopian vision of a world of clarity, purity and candour.

In every sense, Carolin Wehrmann‘s “Reflections” are to be seen as part of meaningful contemporary art. Given both her high degree of artistic skill and the depth of meaning and multi-layered nature of her message, in her latest series of paintings Carolin Wehrmann achieves the ultimate in art.

Carolin Wehrmann had her first breakthrough far from her native Düsseldorf with exhibitions in the USA such as in Naples (Fl.), Newport (RI), Key Largo (Fl.), Boca Raton (Fl.) and, in 2008, in Beverly Hills (Karen Lynne Gallery, closed 2009), later in Germany at Kunsthaus Conzen (Düsseldorf) and Sylt, as well as in Dubai, Paris, Vienna and Luxembourg.

Today the artist's works are exclusively represented by the following selected galleries:

Craighead Green Gallery, Dallas

Galeria K, Palma de Mallorca, Spain

Galerie Schortgen, Luxembourg

Her works are to be found in significant public and private collections (a.o. collection Nikolaus Schües Sen. - Reederei Laeisz ) and in numerous private residences in Europe, the USA and UAE. She has also undertaken commissions for superyachts from the Lürssenwerft Company and other reknowned enterprises and companies. Globally renowned interior architect Terence Disdale, who fits out superyachts and private planes, rank among her most famous admirers.

The artist has two children, one grandchild and a dog. She resides in a large old country house near Lübeck, where she transformed an old barn into a spacious studio, which remains the centre of her daily practice.

“Having spent many years being involved in viewing & choosing artwork for my clients I have come across many pieces of ‘water’ artwork, however Carolin takes the meaning of beauty & detail to a new level. Her works are undoubtedly the finest I have ever seen.”

Terence Disdale, London - globally renowned interior architect, who fits out superyachts and private planes

Last updated: April 2026