Claire Zinn

Claire Zinn is a Johannesburg-based artist whose work centers on oil painting combined with printmaking techniques like drypoint, linocut, and monotype. By layering these media, she creates depth and explores the interplay between them while striving for photorealism. Her art focuses on nature, highlighting landscapes, plants, and small creatures, inspired by her experiences camping in South African reserves and gardening with her father.

Claire Zinn is a full-time artist based in Johannesburg. She has a Fine Art Honours Degree, majoring in Art History and Printmaking from Rhodes University in Grahamstown. Her art practice consists mainly of oil painting often combined with printmaking techniques such as drypoint, linocut, and monotype. These are layered in order to create depth and set up an interaction between the mediums. She views this as an entanglement of images, ideas and events, as well as feeding her obsession with achieving photorealistic perfection. Claire's main focus is the natural world, one that excludes humans. Apart from a vast landscape, many of her works also feature small but essential creatures and plants that allow life to flourish. The fascination and admiration stems from a lifetime spent camping in reserves around South Africa, as well as afternoons gardening with her father. Claire Zinn started collaborating with David Krut Workshop (DKW) in 2015, producing monotypes. She was also represented by DKP at Turbine Art Fair 2015. Since collaborating with DKW, Zinn has produced over 50 monotypes. Zinn had her first solo exhibition with David Krut Projects (DKP) in November 2016, which showcased a range of her monotypes. Since then, she was featured at DKP’s booth at Turbine Art Fair 2019. Zinn’s next solo exhibition with DKP titled ‘The Day Lingered’ opens in September 2021, featuring reduction and single plate linocuts, oil paintings and mixed media monotypes.