Daisy Krens is an artist based in Leeds, currently completing a BA in Fine Art at the University of Leeds, where her dissertation on Picasso's Guernica was awarded a First. Her practice is informed by conversation, memory and film, which she reworks through drawing as a process of repetition, erasure and material resistance.
Working primarily in charcoal and soft pastel, Krens uses dramatic mark-making to trace introspection and curiosity, depicting a range of social relations — from small rituals of gathering to quiet isolation, whether in company or alone. Her anonymous figures, often recurring as a Rückenfigur ("back-figure"), invite the viewer to project themselves into the image, drawing attention to the space between self and world. Merging landscape with figurative elements, her drawings search for moments of pause that evoke loneliness, self-evaluation and uncertainty.
Krens's process is physical and embodied — scratching, rubbing and carving into the surface by hand — producing work that feels animated, as though caught in a state of becoming. Through this interplay of addition and removal, she echoes the way memories are continually made and remade as temporary versions of the past.
Krens has exhibited across Leeds and London, including at LightSpace Leeds, Leeds Art Gallery and Central Library, and Assembly House, and was a featured artist with London Art Round Up and the UAL Awarding Body.