Maggy Vught

Maggy Vught was born in Leuven on 16 July 1949.

From a young age, drawing and coloring were her main occupation. After secondary school, Maggy went to the Leuven academy and was taught by Jan Cobbaert, Julien Bal, Roger Selleslachs, Marcel Cockx and others.

Her father Julien Vught, a late impressionist, worked with a pallet knife with oil on canvas. At the end of the sixties, she adopted this technique when she painted her first works. In 1971, a first exhibition followed with her father and his colleague Alfons Laureys. In 1974, an exhibition in the Faculty Club in Leuven. The works are still figurative. During that period, there were various exhibitions in Leuven.

In 1980, her preference shifted to watercolour and in 1984 she discovered painting on silk.
She worked completely self-taught and developed her own technique. Five years followed with designing and painting silk clothing. In addition, she sold well in her own small shop.
During this very active period, she also delivered custom orders to suite shops in Antwerp, Brussel, Sint-Truiden, etc.
At the end of the eighties, the desire for free painting became so great that the shop was closed and she entered the art world.

In the 1990s, the works were still flat and on panel, but gradually the works became thicker and more voluminous. The base of the works was modeled by hand before the actual painting was applied. It is a mixed media in which hand-painted silk is also used. A period of high productivity and many exhibitions followed, like Lineart in Ghent in 1990, 1991 and 1992.

But the artist struggles with conscientious objections. In Thailand she witnessed the silk production with her own eyes. She saw the masses of silk cocoons bubbling in the boiling water and the hands of dozens of young women who unraveled the cocoons day in day out in the hot water into an extremely thin silk thread. This process did not match her values, but her entire technique was based on silk. Moreover, certain silk colors turned out to be too sensitive to light, causing them to lose part of their pigment. With great regret, she therefore resolutely stopped in November 1993.

In the following years she searched for harmony within herself. Philosophy and spirituality were a great comfort. After an eleven-year process, she resumed her profession as a painter in 2004, with a completely different technique without silk. Maggy felt reborn, the eleven-year break had certainly paid off. She saw her works as messages of gas, an announcement of changing energies. The works are created completely intuitively. During this productive period of very diverse work, abstract painting lessons are also given in her studio.

Another difficult emotional period in her life announces itself and puts her life as an artist on hold again.

Due to the lack of a studio, she immerses herself in "secret geometry" and teaches a group of ladies in Leuven for seven years. Unfortunately, these lessons have to stop, there is one last lesson on Friday and the following week the lockdown starts due to covid.

In 2024, her husband sets up a small studio in the house and she can paint with great dedication again. Addicted as she is to colors and aware that colors are energies that can elevate people, the future is open again. The inspiration and motivation have returned. Her works have evolved into intuitive expressions of positive energy with a great diversity of color, influenced by the dripping technique of Jackson Pollock, who has inspired her greatly since the 90s.

Color has a positive energy and today Maggy mainly wants to make people happy with her work.