That's the first time I hear of this fear, really; on the
contrary, I notice that when I tag a work as sensual or sexy
or erotic the views go up!
All jokes aside; of course, I do see that there are
viewers who will almost always react to my portraits and
virtually never to my nudes and vice versa. We all have
different fields of interest. I know that I am rarely stopped
in my tracks by a landscape or a still myself, although I do
very much appreciate the skillful artistry of some of them.
I love urban-scapes and some abstracts too but I don't
think I am passionate enough about them to paint them
myself.
I can never separate my being a woman from
anything I am, feel or do. Basically I am a very passionate,
sensitive and sensual earthly kind of being if that makes
sense. So my art always comes from that core of me, it's
unavoidable.
Who have been your biggest influences artistically - and
how would you say they have influenced you?
Being Flemish I can't escape the importance of classic
masters like Rubens and Rembrandt and Van Gogh, they
come with our culture and education. I love their mastery
of the human form, their portraits and skin tones. I love
Egon Schiele a lot too, the honesty and raw sensuality of
his work, a bit like Henry Miller in literature to me. As for
contemporary artists, I was undeniably influenced by my
peer May Ling Yong, especially in the beginning, subjectwise because she also does a lot of portraits and figures,
and technically and in my color pallet too of course. By my
friend Paul Lovering's watercolor portraits because the
first time I saw his portfolio I thought I want to paint like
that, with so much soul. I love Andrew Salgado's portraits
too, and many other contemporary painters. Other than
that it's music, books, photography and movies that inspire
me and really all things beautiful and people and their
emotions of course.
What do you consider the most important thing for an
artist to have? What advice would you give to an aspiring
artist?
I feel very young in the arts to go and give advice to
anyone, a bit out of place. But I would say passion and
perseverance and just go for it; you have nothing to lose
and everything to gain. Work a lot and give yourself space
and time to evolve.