Willkens has long been inspired by the portraits of women from early Renaissance, in particular, the soulful figures of Giotto as well as works by Flemish masters. Willkens’s portrayed women have a subtle smile, with their hairs pulled tightly off forehead with various hair accessories. Such reveal the social upbringing in Medieval Europe in which women are supposed to have hair up with stylized expression, meaning proper, elegant and righteousness of a woman. Willkens’s almost saint-like portrayed ladies, with their calm gazes, long and delicate facial features, and pale like porcelain complexions, all reflect the beauty criteria of women that are rooted in ancient Greek culture and extended to Medieval Europe.  As she notes, "I have always been in love with early Renaissance painting. The portraits are spiritual, pure and innocent, almost Goddess or saint-like, and after hundreds of years, still manage to touch the hearts of people."

Her images of human beings seem to derive from a different frame of time. Faces, as well as whole figures, often without any specific attribute and without a particular statement of space, are composed with plain sensitive colour panels. Willkens would like to call these paintings “Collective Portraits”. To her, the outcome of her images is “a melted view of different persons from different times and different cultures as they are handed down to us through the arts.“ Her search also includes the observation of contemporary people.

In this way she creates some sort of amalgam of human images, that is always slightly reminiscent of somebody, of somewhere, maybe also of some feeling of being fresh, unspent and peaceful.