I was born in Hamburg in 1986 and trained at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich and the UdK Berlin, where I finished as Meisterschüler in 2020. Since then I've worked from a high-ceilinged studio in Alt-Hohenschönhausen, Berlin.
My process is slow. An object usually sits in the studio for months before it earns a canvas — I want to know its weight, the way light catches its edges, the colour it actually is rather than the colour I assume it to be. Each painting takes between four and ten months; most are oil on linen, painted in thin, deliberate layers.
The work has been shown recently in Berlin, Leipzig and Vienna, and is held in private collections across Europe. A solo exhibition is planned for 2027.
"Ketel paints objects the way a portraitist paints faces — with the patience to wait for the thing to look back."