Self-taught painter and illustrator Vincent Bakkum (b. 1962 NL) has a way with women. His sought-after paintings capture the female form with elegance evocative of art nouveau and David Bailey’s chic fashion photographs from the ‘60s.

The women on his canvasses are young and beautiful, immortalized and idealized in elegant slender lines filled in with rich hues. “Some of my ideas do come from the time when I was immersed in the 
world of fashion,” admits Bakkum, who spent many years working as a model and whose artwork has appeared in magazines such as British Marie Claire. “But I think my fascination with youth has to do with confronting my own mortality: painting is my way of shouting out in colour against the ever-present rustle of death in the background.”