© Arlette Steenmans
Meet Arlette Steenmans
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Arlette Steenmans was born in Mechelen, Belgium on February 5th, 1958. Until the beginning of 1982 she lived in the center of the city of Mechelen where she went to school. After having completed grammar school (1976), she continued studies at the "Karel de Grote Hogeschool voor schone kunsten", high school for art in Antwerp, speciality painting, where she graduated in 1980.
The work of Arlette Steenmans, seen on her website, covers the period from 1978 to the present, most of the paintings being produced during the nineties, as the outcome of spontaneous inspiration prompted by feelings aroused by accidental events. Although she refused commercial initiatives to sell her paintings for a long time, they are now to be found in private collections all over Europe and beyond.
Arlette tries to make use of the best quality painting tools, although during hard times it wasn't always possible to afford quality brushes and other painting tools. However, even with poor materials she managed to produce excellent work, a fact that emphasizes her talent and technical skills.
Over a period of years she has experimented with a number of techniques and many different materials- her favorite techniques being mixed media, water color and oil painting. She has a skillful hand and manages to depict images with photographic accuracy, having mastered the color palette perfectly.
Her deep love of nature explains why animals and often insects, occur in many of her paintings, sometimes as a way of catching the eye, sometimes as an enigmatic detail. Sometimes the spectator's eye is deceived by a masterly trompe-l'oeil (fool the eye). Some pictures are constructed to include their environment in unexpected ways, for example, the picture involving a shirt and a sleeping cat. Due to the pinpoint-sharp detail of the painting, combined with its ingenuity, its originality and the whimsical nature of the imagination, the artwork of Arlette Steenmans is highly distinctive.
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