Monique Van Steen

Join me on this journey through time, from the netherlands to spain:

While studying fine arts in my native country, Holland, I was offered an Erasmus Grand to go and study abroad at another University of Fine Arts within Europe. I elected the University of Valencia and soon found out that I had more in common with the philosophy of life and preferences of the spanish people and art-students then with my colleagues back home. The change of geographic place of living and working is clearly recognizable in my work,
especially the mediterranean light has made a great change on my color-palette.
I graduated in the Fine Arts in 1999 but around the year 2005/2006 my need for color and direct expression became more and more urgent. So there the switch was made from making ceramic sculptures (that was my mayor at the “Hogeschool voor de kunsten en design’s-Hertogenbosch”) and chinese ink drawings on paper to painting on canvas.
Feeling that an human being is a neverending work in progress, during the period that I lived in Barcelona I took a deep dive into the realm of the inner human. I am fascinated by the complex subleties of sensations and emotions, and this comes back in my paintings.
Nowadays I live in an intentional community where we are setting up an alternative to the regular mode society.