Jacqueline Schäfer lives and works in Amsterdam. There she graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in 1989. Up until then painting was mainly something she kept to herself and did not share with many others. For her it was a means to express herself. When she realised it was also a means to communicate, painting became something more, something bigger. Her studies stimulated her to find a language of shape that suited her. She discovered her own style and has developed it through the years. Her work can be identified by the playful composition of clear shapes, bright colours and clearly defined, black contours that result in harmoniously coloured planes. She uses figurative, but non-realistic images. She creates a world where her figure shapes are easily recognisable and where they belong.
The themes in her paintings range from happy, strange and imaginary birds to static and sober still-lifes and female nudes. Particularly the last category represents the artist’s own feelings and moods, to such an extent they can almost be considered self-portraits. Since 2004 the artist has been transforming her strange birds into statuettes; a challenge she has developed in addition to her painting. All of her work clearly expresses Schäfer’s evident and positive love of life in a complex, modern society.