GLOBAL COLLECTORS ART PRIZE | MASTERS DEFINING THE FUTURE OF ART

Biography

Kristine Reiner is an American mixed-media artist known internationally for her unconventional approach to contemporary painting, particularly her signature technique of painting with real roses. Based in South Dakota, Reiner explores the intersection of emotion, material, and movement, transforming an unexpected natural object into a tool for expressive mark-making.

Working across abstract painting and mixed media, Reiner incorporates roses, acrylics, inks, textiles, and unconventional materials to create layered compositions rich in texture and emotional depth. Her process is intuitive and often spontaneous, allowing color, gesture, and physical interaction with the canvas to guide each work. Through the rose - a familiar symbol of beauty, love, and vulnerability - she challenges traditional expectations of both the subject and the act of painting.

Reiner’s work is deeply connected to personal experience and the expressive possibilities of art. Rather than seeking perfection or a predetermined outcome, she embraces experimentation, imperfection, and the freedom of creating without rigid boundaries. Her paintings invite viewers to discover their own interpretations, finding meaning in the tension between beauty and discomfort, fragility and strength.

Her artwork has received international recognition, with features in British Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Harper’s Bazaar. Through her studio practice and creative workshops, Reiner also encourages others to explore artistic expression as a means of discovery, connection, and personal freedom.

At the heart of Reiner’s practice is a belief that art is not simply something to observe, but something to experience. By challenging conventional materials and methods, she continues to explore what becomes possible when creativity is approached with curiosity, courage, and a willingness to break the rules.

Artist Statement

A Revolution of Love

I believe love is a revolution. Healing is its resistance.

My work explores the relationship between love, loss, transformation, and the courage it takes to remain open in a world that teaches us to close ourselves off. Through expressive mark-making, layered textures, and the use of unconventional materials, I explore the ways we break, rebuild, and rediscover ourselves. These works exist in the space between tenderness and turbulence, where healing becomes less about returning to who we were and more about becoming who we are capable of being.

The rose is central to my practice. A living symbol of beauty, vulnerability, and resilience, it offers a language beyond words. Its petals become both instrument and material, leaving traces that are unpredictable, imperfect, and alive. Like love itself, the rose holds contradictions: softness and strength, pleasure and pain, beauty and decay. I am drawn to these contradictions because healing rarely happens in a straight line. It is messy, uncomfortable, and deeply human.

Across these works, color becomes an emotional force. The vibrant blues and greens surrounding golden flowers evoke the persistence of life and the possibility of renewal. The pinks, yellows, and fragmented petals suggest the delicate work of rebuilding after loss, finding beauty in what remains, and allowing ourselves to bloom differently. In the more turbulent composition, thick strokes of blue, yellow, and red collide in a visceral expression of disruption. It is the moment when the old structure no longer holds, when everything familiar is challenged, and something new begins to emerge.

I see this process as a revolution - not one defined by destruction, but by the radical decision to choose love over fear, connection over isolation, and compassion over indifference. Healing asks us to confront what has wounded us without allowing it to determine what we become. It asks us to soften without surrendering our strength and to recognize that vulnerability is not weakness, but a form of courage.

I create to make room for that transformation. Each painting becomes an act of release, a record of feeling, and an invitation to look beyond the surface. I hope these works remind us that we do not need to be untouched by pain to be beautiful, nor perfectly healed to be worthy of love.

A revolution of love begins with the willingness to feel, to repair, and to begin again. It grows through the choices we make toward ourselves and one another. And perhaps, in a world so accustomed to division, the most radical act of all is to keep choosing love.

Love is not the absence of pain. It is the force that allows us to transform it.

https://www.kristinereiner.com
https://www.instagram.com/kristinesartwork
https://www.facebook.com/KristinesArtwork/