Stephanie Maeseele

On my process: I always start off with going through my archive. I’ve got lots of photographs, artbooks, postcards, magazines.. I scroll through them to get inspiration and build up the next painting in my head by ‘steeling’ parts from here and there... After my granddad passed away a few years ago, he left me with tons of slides (I am digitalizing them now). That’s what I’m mainly looking at over the last couple of years. Hundreds of pictures he took on his many travels mixed with pictures from family gatherings. Although I haven’t been to most of his travel destinations, I do feel connected to the imagery. By combining parts from different sources, I make it my own. I start on the canvas straight away, without making a study in advance. Most of the time, I’m working on different paintings at the same time. They all have many layers of oil paint that need to dry a bit in between.. My main objective is to let the different imagery merge with each other without suggesting any form of hierarchy to them. After I worked on a painting for a couple of days (and struggling on them a lot of the times), it feels like the painting is starting the get a logic of its own... It’s all there and I need to unravel it, it’s like a puzzle I need to complete. On my subject matter, I never aim to be a storyteller in any way. I’d like to think I make paintings about painting.