Homme chapeau rouge (2007) Painting by Véronique Van Eetvelde

Years ago, Veronique van Eetvelde decided to change her career from a promising career in the marketing, to work full time as a painter.
She studied in Brussels in the famous “Ecole internationale de peinture Van der Kelen”. It was an opportunity to get familiar with the traditional techniques of oil painting, with a focus on decorative arts.
She spent a few months in Vienna, a unique place to get acquainted with the baroque art, very typical of Central Europe.
Afterwards, she has been living a few years in Rome, a very rich experience. This offered her the possibility to interpret in a contemporary language various themes of the Italian decorative painting, from the Antiquity until the XIXth century, with a preference for the inspiration of the medieval painters of frescoes in Umbria and Central Italy.
Remaining in the Mediterranean area, she moves to Jerusalem, where she has now been living for more than a year, a fascinating place, although very different from the sweet hills of Umbria. So far, a rich but – at times – difficult experience in a unique setting, origin of the main monotheistic religions, and still disputed in the ongoing conflict, which has been lasting for so many years.
Under the unique light of Jerusalem, and surrounded by the tensions and sufferings resulting from the occupation, she has been touring Palestine – and occasionally Jordan -, developing warm ties with the local population. Those new experiences were an opportunity to mature and progress in her painting. Her style which was essentially ‘decorative’ or ‘aesthetic’ has become more ‘lively’ – reflecting sympathy and compassion for the people she gets to know -. Her canvases depict often the beauty and freshness of the traditional way of life of Bedouins and peasants – reminiscent of ‘Biblical’ scenes -, currently at risk of disappearing.
At times, she depicts the everyday sufferings resulting from the brutal meeting of this traditional life with a colonial system particularly cruel.
Revealing to the poorest their beauty and the one of their way of life, her paintings might also express what some people call a “preferential option for the poor”.

• Nationality: BELGIUM
• Date of birth : 1974
• Artistic domains:
• Groups: Contemporary Belgian Artists