Silke Otto-Knapp has been based in London since 1995. She holds a degree in cultural studies from the University of Hildesheim and a master of arts from Chelsea College of Art and Design, London. She is a painter who works in the often-marginalized medium of watercolour. Unlike traditional watercolourists, Otto-Knapp paints on canvas which allows her to repeatedly wash down her images, and rework them layer by layer, in order to create pictures of great translucency and delicacy. Her subjects include botanical gardens, Los Angeles cityscapes, Busby Berkeley musicals, and musicians such as PJ Harvey and Patti Smith — subjects in which a tension between artifice and reality is both manifest and blurred.

Otto-Knapp has had solo exhibitions at Kunstverein München,  Tate Britain, London, the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf, the Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff, and Modern Art Oxford. She has recently participated in group exhibitions at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens; Baltic, Newcastle; and the 9th International Istanbul Biennial. Otto-Knapp is represented by Galerie Daniel Buchloz, Cologne; greengrassi, London; Galerie Karin Guenther, Hamburg; and Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York.