Kiki Lamers first became known in the early 90's for her sober life-size self-portraits. In the mid 90's she focused on painting children, capturing the unique expression of a spontaneous moment. 

Kiki Lamers' oil paintings show a sublime technical mastery. Kiki Lamers has been perfecting a technique, which she has been employing during the past decennia. When photographing Kiki Lamers often uses photographer's lights to set light on her subjects' faces. This is a very bold, merciless approach for the sitter. The artist is moving in very close on her subject. While the small children at play, which Kiki Lamers painted showed little self-awareness in front of a camera, the more grown up subjects in Lamers recent portraits react visibly to the intrusion of the camera. The teenage girl looks back at us with a drawn-up gaze, the aging woman on another canvas answers the camera with a cool held up head, looking down at us as heroically and yet defensively. In these monumental canvases Kiki Lamers manages to capture what Anna Tilroe once called the "uneasiness we feel about having a body".