Lieve Vanrusselt
While I am generally busy with work and charity projects, creating art has become a vital part of my existence; it keeps me happy and sane. It is a continuous learning challenge and I am so thrilled and feel so lucky to be on this journey. I enjoyed going to the art academy when I was a teenager and then parked it for a while. I did my MA degree in industrial design at the Royal College of Art (London, 2002). Working in this creative and inspiring environment for two years encouraged me to take up fine art again a few years later. Until now, I have mainly focused on drawing, oil painting and sculpture. For this exhibition, I would like to exhibit my most recent oil paintings and drawings, themed around the community life of Kisantu, a small town in the DRC where I travel to twice a year on charity missions to help people there in our social enterprise.
For this theme but also more in general, my art work is inspired by moments and scenes I capture in photographs and then let these images roam and develop in my mind. Once the subjects and ideas become more defined, I dive in and lay the first strokes or draw the first lines, the picture itself becomes only a far and vague memory … the painting or drawing becomes a personal representation of that moment or scene or person. For the paintings for this exhibition, I use oil paints made myself using natural pigments and walnut oil, natural impasto and I paint on wooden boards. For the drawings I use chalks, watercolour and inks. I sometimes also use collage.