Carla van de Puttelaar’s first solo exhibition, Adornments, at Arusha Gallery, focuses on portraits that engages costumes and draperies with strong light-dark contrasts, resulting in powerful visual images. She proves to be deeply inspired by the Dutch Old Masters, such as Rembrandt. Not only due to her focus on light and shadow but also on technique. His use of models, with different characteristics, are definitely present at her work
Her work has focused on not only depicting the nude female body as it is, with all of its imperfections, differently from what we see in the media today; but also in making the viewer perceptive of the individuality of each woman. She goes further and as she has stated herself: "I am especially interested in the skin, the sensations that give away somebody's mood". She wants the viewer not only to see and perceive but also to desire to engage the sense of touch. In recent years her studies of the complexity of the female form have taken her to also show interest in the intricacy of flowers. In them, as well, she used one of her work's main characteristics, natural light, to catch the subject and its shapes and forms at their most sensitive moments. By creating a perceivable contrast with their dark background, this sensitiveness is allowed to turn into sensuality, making her work so unique.
Graduating from the renowned Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, fine art photographer, Carla Van de Puttelaar, has exhibited her work to audiences that extend from the Netherlands, France, Hungary, Spain to the United States and Korea. Specifically, in establishments like the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Museum Winterhur in Switzerland and the Rembrandt House Museum in the Netherlands.
