Catherine van Pottelsberghe I Ares Horizontal

Through her paintings, Catherine vanPottelsberghe de la Potterie reveals a universe profoundly shaped by light,material, and the mineral landscapes of Central Africa. Born in the heart ofKatanga, the Belgian artist developed an early fascination with stone,pigments, earth, and geological phenomena that continue to inform her entirebody of work.

Her childhood and youth in Kolwezi deeply marked her artistic vision. Theextreme contrasts of light, the mineral-rich earth, and landscapes transformedby mining activity became the emotional foundations of her practice. It wasthere that she created her first plaster workshops, drawings, andthree-dimensional explorations involving stone, oil, pigments, and clay.

After more than twenty-five years devoted to sculpture, Catherine vanPottelsberghe pursued an exacting research into material and spatialstructures. Trained in visual and spatial arts, she refined her practice in thequarries of Dinant and Mazy as well as at the sites of Laeken, developingexpertise in stone carving, forging, lost-wax casting, and micro-metallurgy.

Between 1989 and 1994, she continued her studies at La Cambre School of VisualArts in Brussels. Her interest in crystallography, tectonic movements, andspatial organization later led her to the University of Valencia in Spain,where she deepened her research into stone, lead, pigments, and earth.

A decisive period spent in Greece further enriched her work. Fascinated bymarble quarries, ancient ruins, and earthquake-cracked walls, the artistdeveloped a visual language in which memory, geology, and architectureconverge. While in Athens, she also explored the intersection of art andscience through research involving robotics, artificial intelligence, andtactile interpretations of color.

Since returning to Belgium in 2006, Catherine van Pottelsberghe has focusedprimarily on painting. Her large-scale abstract compositions created withpigment and oil on linen reveal a dense and luminous inner universe that hasbecome her artistic signature. Vibrant colors, mineral textures, and layeredsurfaces evoke both African landscapes and the traces of time and memory.

Her work establishes a continuous dialogue between abstraction, science,geology, and emotion, giving rise to immersive paintings in which matter itselfappears to vibrate from within.

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