About Me
Caroline Rutgeerts was born in Leuven, Belgium and spent a year in the USA and in Salamanca, Spain as an exchange student, experiences which reflected her continuous interest in other cultures and international travel, fascinated by the never ending variety of land-and cloudscapes, the desert and the sea. She lived for more than ten years in the heart of vibrant, international Brussels and then moved to the outskirts of Brussels.
She originally obtained an MA in Translation Spanish/English/Dutch and worked several years in international sales, but her passion for Art, passed on to her by her mother – also an artist - drove her back to college and the art academy, to obtain a BA in Art Education, specialising in painting afterwards. She is an art teacher, with broad experience in teaching both national and international curriculum and a painter, regularly exhibiting her work.
Painting
For Caroline, painting is a process of ‘awakening’, a way of expressing existential questions. She tries to translate both the spirituality and the threatening elements of nature on canvas, without being tied down to a certain use of media or to the existing conventions of the art of painting. She has a strong preference for warm, earthly colours and rough materials and concentrates on investigating texture with all the painterly techniques practised to achieve textured effects while restricting the colour range used, privileging ochres, greys and mid-tone, earthly colours.
Work
In her work she tries to distance herself from the complexity of reality and the image consumption culture. Her goal is to reconnect with nature through a naive perception of colour, atmosphere, texture and varying light conditions and to apply those impressions in her paintings. Because the pressure of this compulsive state of progression touches her so deeply, she senses the intense spirituality of remote places where nature is untouched, very strongly.
Inspiration
The beauty in the chaos surrounding her counterbalances and stills her inner restlessness. Suddenly, the many questions that she has can simply stay unanswered. She experiences painting as a ‘revelation’, with the unfolding of her thoughts and feelings being reflected in the gradual building up several layers of heavy materials, plaster, sand, charcoal, dust, etc. She often experiences absolute calm in a steady flow and feels completely absorbed when inspired.
Aside from translating her vision of nature, her work also depicts her state of mind: the way she looks at things, the way she lives her life. Painting allows her to express a visualization of herself as a searcher – perhaps looking into a mirror or taking a poetic, wandering and discovering path, looking for answers, using both the natural world and her personal experience as an inspiration.