Johanna Claerhout (b. 1998) is a painter working in Paris and Brussels. Coming from a family of artists, art has always shaped her life. Autodidact and art historian, she draws on both instinct and study to find her own path—working intuitively, always drawn to color, light, and composition.

Claerhout paints what she loves, what holds memory and emotion for her, what beauty means to her, built from a deep connection with what she paints. Color and shadow connect her subjects—people, flowers, imagined worlds. She always plays with shadows, painted either sharp or faded or doubled, in unexpected hues. They hold as much weight as the subject itself. Each scene is staged like theater, searching for balance between light and dark, depth and flatness, reality and imagination—built from a deep connection with what she paints.

Her portraits capture gaze and essence in bold colors, putting the subject literally in the spotlight. Claerhout’s flower paintings compose hand-picked flowers from her own garden. She carefully builds scenes where she plays with scale, lighting, and contrast, blending influences from the Old Masters with a bold, contemporary and personal perspective.

At the root of it all is recomposing nature, and a wish to share the beauty and joy she finds in it.