Vignettes in Monochrome: In conversation with K.T. Kobel
I had the pleasure of spending the afternoon with Amsterdam-based artist K.T. Kobel where we spoke about his cinematic, monochrome paintings that blur the lines between memory, intimacy, and ambiguity. His work unfolds like a series of suspended film stills: fragments charged with emotion, yet resistant to fixed meaning. In our conversation, we explored the influence of cinema and lighting, the personal histories embedded in his subjects, the role of colour as an emotional register, and the subtle power of ambiguity and voyeurism that runs through his practice.
Cruciform Red, 2025, Acrylic on linen, 120 × 120 cm.
When I engage with your works I notice a sense of tension and memory. How would you describe what first drew you to making your works in this way?
Cinema is one of my major influences. I shoot films in the studio often, vignettes. A lot of people paint from film stills, and I watch so many films that I see those connections in their references.
Do you think references have to hold meaning?
For some people, maybe. But I think meaning also comes through how an image is rendered, the colour palette, technique, the emotion you imbue in it. With figurative work, references are important. From the beginning I’d collect them from different places, combine them into something new, and then paint from that. But I grew tired of not having ownership over the images. There was always a part of me that felt like I could make it more personal, you know? Which is why I turned to staging my own vignettes in the studio. I also write short vignettes for the paintings, sometimes on their backs.
Would you say your own film practice informs the paintings?
Definitely. The two are interlinked, always in dialogue. I can’t imagine making something without it becoming a painting.
What does your process entail?
I paint quickly, often in one sitting, to capture that sense of naivety before overthinking sets in. When you start something for the first time, you’re not tied down by technique, theory, or practice. For me, that’s when you do your best work. It’s easy to get caught up in the ‘right’ way of doing things and lose that rawness. By working quickly, I give myself boundaries that help me hold onto that naivety, without getting bogged down in the process. Cinema always plays a role too, the heightened emotions you get through lighting in films by Argento or Bava, especially Suspiria with its bold reds and blues, is a perfect example of how colour becomes a way of intensifying feeling.
You reference cinema a lot. How does that play into your practice?
I’m constantly watching films and screenshotting moments that might spark something later. I believe everything in my practice should be a point of inspiration for something else. I’ve kept a categorized archive of references for years. Fabrics like satin, lace and silk are my favorites because I love painting their textures. Visually, I find them really interesting. I also collect books, sometimes leaving them untouched for years, knowing they’ll eventually become important.
Detail shot The Bright End Of Despair, 2024, Acrylic on linen, 100 × 70 cm.
The figures in your work, the women we see, who are they to you?
With the Amsterdam show in particular, these were all women in my life. They were my daughter, my mum, my grandmother, others I’ve had connections with. So, yeah, they're all very personal in a sense. I think I always draw from experience and from people that I've known and been around. But it never necessarily needs to be said. From my point of view, I’m always painting a particular interaction, relationship, a feeling, or an abstraction of a person.
Are you aware of those feelings before you paint, or does that come later?
I'm always aware of the feeling. Depending on what point in my life I'm at, there's always a yearning to create something. And however that feeling manifests is usually what gets made. Sometimes, I’ll want to make something that can pull me out of certain states.
Detail shot Some Things Make Sense at The Time, 2025, Acrylic, oil, encaustic on linen, 50 × 70 cm.
Where would you say you are at now, in life and in your work?
I think I'm in a transitional period. In this last year I've felt more confident in who I am. I think it takes a long time to figure out who you are, as a person and as an artist. I think they've kind of come to a crescendo.
I love that choice in words, so you feel everything's built up to this moment?
Yeah, it definitely feels like that. I've been an artist for long enough where I can understand what I want to make without compromise. But it ebbs and flows. You feel good about something, then you make it, and then you ask: how can I distill that emotion further? The work I want to make now feels sublime, I want to dial into what makes an image carry a very specific feeling to me.
Is the viewer's experience important to you?
I make work for myself, first and foremost. I try not to think about how it will be perceived, because that dilutes the process. That’s why the images remain ambiguous.
Let's touch on that, often your works are cropped or obscured. Do you view them as stand-alone moments or as a narrative?
I like when work can speak to each other, and when images have what I call a “temperature”.
What do you mean by temperature?
There's hot and cold, right? And you have to find a way that they can sit alongside one another and lean in different directions. That's why I return to the cruciform shape; it resists linearity or a single focal point. The images sit together in ambiguity, I enjoy that.
Blue Cruciform, 2025, Acrylic on linen, 120 × 120 cm.
That ties into the way you tease the viewer, offering only fragments. Is that intentional?
There’s definitely an element of voyeurism that I try to instill in the work. You never see the whole context, just a specific moment in time. I enjoy pinpointing that.
I think there's also power in that, you know exactly what you're painting and feeling, yet the viewer will never know entirely.
Yeah. I really enjoy that.
When the absence is as voluptuous as the excess, 2024, Acrylic on linen, lacquer, resin, wood, 100 × 140 × 30 cm.
Are emotions linked to certain colors for you? I see a lot of pink and blue in your works, what is their relevance?
They certainly are. Over time I realized monochrome lets me strongly sway the emotions in a painting. With monochrome, there can sometimes be a coldness to it, but then it can also feel somewhat erotic or romantic, you know? I feel like the blue is melancholic in a sense, but then when I combine it with the pink it changes the feeling. I don’t always analyze why, I just feel when an image should be a certain colour.
Your titles always feel layered, how do you arrive at them?
Titles are important. They either obscure meaning or deepen it further. I think the image and text are very important to one another in my work, and I like that they're very ambiguous. They speak more to a feeling than to a direct representation of what the image is showing. But they're more poetic in a sense.
Things We Leave Behind, 2024, Acrylic on recycled panel, 60 × 40 cm.
What themes would you say your work speaks to?
I think it's important that the work can speak for itself. But I paint from a lot of personal experience or trauma that I've lived through. The idea of ambiguity and defining a very specific moment in time is what I’d say is important.
Do you often revisit works?
I think one of the most important things for an artist is to know when to stop working on a piece. I think it's very easy if you're working with oil paint to come back and be able to change elements, and sometimes things do need to be changed, but I think other times they should just be left with. I really try to be present and think, “Okay, this is what I was thinking at the time, and this is how I've represented it”. If I return to the same work on a different day, I hold a different set of feelings and emotions. And I ask myself, does it really need more of my time? Probably not.