Since the early 1980s, Belgian artist Sylvie Martens
has applied herself to gurative painting, placing her within a long tradition. Born and raised in a region rich of artists she was very soon confronted with the art of Emile Claus and the Belgian Luminist tradition of beginning 20th Century. All painters concerned with the special luminosity and picturesque feeling of the settings along the river.
One could say that Sylvie Martens is working in the footsteps of
those artists in the way she is looking at nature and in the way she is trying to capture the effects of light and colour on it. At first she was fascinated by landscapes, flowers or plants, never reproducing them but transforming them into abstract shapes and colors. Since a few years she’s concentrating on clouds. The diversity, their ephemeral character and ever changing aspects are each time again a challenge. Here again photographic material is used as a base, a way to create
a composition or to find the colour mood. But soon her work starts to find its own way and becomes a sort of abstract impression of feelings. They become some sort of moodies.
The artist is also very much concerned with the material aspects of her paintings using rather unusual supports such as leather fragments and layers of wax, giving each painting an individual signature, a personality, a unique soul.