IBK (b. 1989) is a South African artist and writer born in Girona, Spain. With a background in Archaeology and Ancient History, IBK graduated with a Joint Honours in African Studies and History of Art in 2013 from the University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, and it was only at the end of 2016 that IBK:The Second Green Lady was founded to follow her lifetime vocation. The next year IBK was officially online, publishing and blogging.

IBK: The Second Green Lady is a pseudonym derived from her ties to the renowned ‘Chinese Girl’(1952-1953), painted by Vladimir Tretchikoff.

As a neo-expressionist creative with an affinity for animals, art, Classics, Renaissance, Latin, history, philosophy and nature IBK defines her artistry as an idiosyncratic take on mixed media surrealism, a partial fauvist experimenting with an array of techniques, environmental critiques, and portraiture. Most notably, each composition carries hidden symbolisms taken from the Western art canon, various faiths, political and environmental symposiums as well as including a covert inscription. IBK employs a canvas as a visual didactic source, a Pictionary of sorts, to challenge, learn, and teach our potential impact in any cause.

IBK has completed other environmental pieces in the past such as ‘Flower Power’ (2017) which fittingly contains a Latin transcription translating to “caution, caution for nature sees”, and ‘Donald’s Ratites’ (2017) and ‘Take Me to the Moon’ (2016) which bring forth a question about extinction versus consumption, an increasing population, animal conservation, climate change, and man’s politic feats against nature.

Please peruse IBK’s Facebook page for more content, previous works and literature accompanying each example with the artist’s references, stimuli and hidden features.