Anne Vanoutryve

I paint landscapes starting from how I experience them. Not based on pictures or images from magazines, no, from a connection to a place.

Wild deserted landscapes can absorb me completely. The vastness overwhelms me every single time.

I register those landscapes in ink or charcoal. In my studio I prefer oil paint. From a gut feeling I try to capture the power of the landscape on canvas. Re-experiencing that landscape in the act of painting is a goal for me. Letting myself get lost in the memory of the landscape, with sketches and fragments of pictures that I have meticulously taken myself, as a kind of archiving of and for the future. Because I also paint what I imagine 2068 will be like.

‘Yes, I’m nothing’ could be used as an umbrella term for my work. The insignificance against nature is what I want to reflect, and nature in change. Not starting from negativity, because where initially only a glacier was visible, a mountain can now also be perceived.

I paint whatever crosses my path and lingers there. Portraits of people and portraits of events that touched me, that made or cracked me. Like the attacks in 2016, or my daughter during her rehabilitation after surgery. Here as well, I do not aim for registration but for a powerful display of feelings. I want to expose the soul, the interior of the portrayed, not so much the physical features, because for me these are inferior to experiences.

Website

annevanoutryve.com