Chantal Grevers

Dutch artist Chantal Grevers creates artworks that meld Romanticism with the uncanny. Grevers draws inspiration from a yearly hike through the Dolomites with her family, filling her memory with enough natural beauty to fuel her artwork until the next year. Yet, Grevers' interpretation of nature is not unequivocally beautiful; she is attracted to the darker side, and its often unpredictable and threatening quality. She explores these two sides of our world and of her own identity through her work. Grevers feels her status as a Gemini strongly, influenced by both her spontaneous, creative side and her organized, perfectionist side. Her work explores these dual facets of her personality, contrasting soft and loose forms with fluctuating brushstrokes and uneasy color.

In each of Grevers' paintings, she places a geometric form, most recurrently a house. This house provides visual and emotional shelter from natural elements, and reflects the human desire to hide from the world. As Grevers' paintings lean into contrast, a tension exists here between the angular traits of these geometric forms and the fluidity of nature. Grevers deftly manipulates both creepy and dreamy elements, ultimately allowing the viewer to take refuge in her work. Grevers studied her technique at the Academy of Art Haarlem Leiden in the Netherlands, where she pinpointed the exact themes she now expresses through her paintings. With each new artwork, Grevers digs even deeper into the contrasts present in herself and nature, developing new ways to translate them onto the canvas.