Johanna Claerhout is a painter working in Paris and Brussels. Coming from a family of artists, art has always shaped her life. Mostly self-taught, her background in art history and experience at galleries give her a unique perspective on art. Creating allows Claerhout to process the world—working intuitively, always drawn to color, light, and composition.

Claerhout works on two ongoing series to keep her practice dynamic, allowing her to explore all facets of her creativity while continually refining her artistic path.

One body of mostly earlier work consists of fictional colorful landscapes that invite viewers into dreamlike worlds—balancing beauty and eeriness, wonder and ambiguity. Starting with digital sketches and natural references, Claerhout builds scenes through imaginary compositions, studying light and shadow often with maquettes before translating them onto canvas.

For the other more recent body of work, Claerhout’s focus shifted to still-life portraits of flowers. She has an obsession with them and their impact. She carefully composes scenes with hand-picked flowers where she plays with scale, lighting, and contrast, blending influences from the Old Masters with a bold, contemporary and personal perspective. She treat my subjects almost like theater characters, putting them in a scene with both natural and artificial lighting. Shadows come to life and play key roles themselves, enhancing the tension between depth and flatness, reality and imagination.

Join her in these worlds of magical forests, bold flowers, and surreal gardens…