Education
Chantal van Houten was born in 1979 in the Netherlands. In 2005, she graduated from the Academy of Media and Art in Amsterdam and worked as a graphic designer. Van Houten found this work unsatisfactory, as she wanted to determine the message of her work for herself. As a result, she left her career as a designer and started on her journey as an artist. Van Houten described the discovery of herself as an artist as a quest. She has since had exhibitions at home and abroad and received rave reviews for her work. Her work has become more colourful over the years.
In much of van Houten’s work, the faces of her subjects are obscured beneath a dark shroud. She does this to make a statement about the unimportance of appearance and skin colour; what is important is who you are as a human being and what choices you make in your life. Van Houten’s works often feature subtle meanings to promote a more critical observation of her work.
For van Houten, art is all about evoking emotion. She finds it important that a message is conveyed in her work. The image stimulates the imagination and comes alive for the viewer. Her inspiration stems from people and behaviour, with emotional expression being a recurring theme in her work. While her portraits may appear expressionless at first glance, the importance lies beneath the exterior. The emotion exists beneath the external appearance to encourage the viewer to examine the artwork closer.
Artist Statement:
Art for me is bringing emotion, I love it when a painting really gets to you, gives you a little tickling. The image is leading to imagination and suggestion and comes alive for the person who looks at it. I get my inspiration from people, people’s behaviour, emotional expressions is for me a recurring theme in my work. With my paintings primarily figurative I want the viewer to experience different emotions. To let people get closer to their emotions and rethink situations. Characteristic about my work is that a lot of faces in my painting are made unclear or have some sort of dark cover. This is about making a statement for it doesn’t matter how you look, which colour you are, what gender you are, it’s about the emotion that lies behind it. People always want to be memorable and show the best of themselves. I don’t think your appearance is important, it’s more important who you are as a human, which choices you make in life, also on a deeper emotional level. There’s always a message in my paintings, some clear, some you’ll have to look harder but that’s the beauty of it.
Also I want to let people experience confusion, the dark unclear faces also refer to society today, the opposite of what we see on social media, where everything is made beautiful, although to give us the suggestion it is. To take that away I’ve made the faces unclear and dark like a mask so you have to look further than the actual picture and to look behind the mask. The importance lies beneath the non expression (the mask), I believe it mandates people to look further than what they see and gets them on a higher emotional level with each other.
Solo Exhibitions
Group Exhibitions
Copyright © 2019 BLUE RHINO Inc. All rights reserved.