Brigitte Van Laethum

Brigitte Van Laethum, born on February 22^nd 1971 in Ixelles, Belgium, trained as interior architect (Saint-Luc) and specialized in decorative painting (Vanderkelen).

After more than 25 years of expatriation in Lebanon, where, professionally, she undertook and realised many private and commercial projects, but also the restoration of churches and monasteries, she returns to Belgium and decides to express herself on canvas.

During the first lockdown in 2020 due to the COVID crisis, she applies her technical skills to large format paintings and realises “rough” figurative canvases, filled with spirituality, melancholy and suffering.

Her experience with restoration of fresco’s, gained in holy places across the Middle-East, is apparent in her paintings that express the eeriness of century old works. The subjects seem to want to escape from the canvass to express their «sehnsucht», their thoughts and emotions with all aspects of their life, incomplete and imperfect, and, at the same time their longing for ideal alternative experiences…

Technique: mix media, paper, glue, acrylic, oil, canvas, wood