Em Vanderlinden was born and raised as Emmelyn Gryspeerdt in Gent, Belgium. With an engineer as a father and an art teacher as a mother she was meant to be an architect. Although after studying architecture at LUCA, School of Arts, Gent (Belgium) and working many years as an architect she searched ways to express her feelings and be more creative. It was until she relocated with her family to Munich, Germany, that the urge of painting came to the front.
She is a self-taught painter, inspired by figurative contemporary artists and the old masters.
Statement
when we are born, we are the most truthful, with all the potential of the person we are meant to be. Interactions with others shape us. We know more about what we do and don't want. But sometimes it also pushes us away from our inner child. We go from innocent to non-innocent (onschuld/schuld, Illusion/desillusion) several times in our lifetime. It is that turning point that I find most interesting and try to explore in my paintings. At that turning point we can always choose to see beauty, despite the situation we are in.
My paintings seem naive but they convey the resilience of life.
It is through my personal experience that i came to search truth of life, who i am and what i stand for in this world. In 2015 i moved to another country and found that, alltough it wasn’t that far yet, people have a very different worldview than the one i grew up with. It was like discovering that Santa doesn’t exist and/or maybe it reflected my own inner struggle?
Now i can accept life more. With my work i want to inspire people and perhaps let them remember their own inner child, so that they can always see the beauty of life.
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