Biography

That Belgian artist of Rwandan origin was born in the winter of 1982 in Munich, Germany. In five years, in the tropical climate of East Africa, where she spent some of her childhood, she discovered, with the encouragement of her mother, a passion for drawing. She was heartened to build her extravagant universe inhabited by small and very wacky characters to reflect their incoherent nature. She settled in Belgium in 1994. In adolescence, she learned techniques of painting with water, such as water colour and gouache. She came to use many layers of these colours on thick paper. She represented fashion, the classical arts, design, and fantasy. In September 2004, she went to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels. She learned other painting techniques, such as oil and acrylic, and exhibited her paintings with other artists for a few years. She discovered Belgian painting in the museums of Brussels and Ostend and, in particular, surrealist art (including the work of Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Leonor Fini, etc.), in which she became interested. Other pictorial styles that fascinate her are symbolism, exemplified by the works of Fernand Knopff and Gustav Klimt, which she encountered during a trip to Vienna, expressionism (Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Casper Van Dongen, etc.), but also baroque and realistic art. In 2010, she began learning to engrave and continued this for three years. She is fascinated by the shapes and colours of the art world that surrounds her. She is a visual artist, pretty much self-taught, who is dedicated to researching a new style born of her imagination. The imagination is, in her view, an important part of the artistic field because it is a means of escape from the harsh realities that prevail in the actual world in which we live. She invites us to travel in a luxurious, illusory and spooky universe.

Influences

René Magritte, Salvador Dalí, Paul Delvaux, Casper Van Dogen, Gustav Klimt, Léonore Fini, Fernand Khnopff

Education

The artist at work