Ria Vanden Eynde
Painter
Tell us about yourself:
Painting makes me feel alive, in a quiet way, it’s like breathing…. I’m taking art classes; I like to know what goes on in other artists’ heads. I’m inquisitive by nature, so I have degrees in diverse fields: mathematics, Gestalt-psychotherapy, ethics and Buddhism and worked in all of them.
What do you make?
I make acrylic paintings, watercolors, pastels and drawings, sometimes I mix these techniques.
Where else on the web can we find you?
I have a blog where I post paintings on from a series I’m doing as a cancer survivor. Paintings by other artists, like f.i. Frida Kahlo, that touched me and comforted me during treatments are my starting point for the works I'm posting there.
What did you dream about last night?
I dreamt I had very long hair and was trying on a revealing red dress!
What inspires you?
Life, our bodies, experiences that move me and make me feel alive: illness, suffering, joy, love, wisdom…I want to externalize those experiences, to embody what they mean to me in an outward form.
Where do you live and what do you like about it?
I live a little outside Leuven , a town near Brussels in (the Flemish speaking part of) Belgium, in a house close to the woods. I love it because it is both calm and lively busy with a lot of innovative cultural projects because the students of KULeuven-university live here during the year. I think I’m split like that myself ;)
What is your biggest fear?
That bad things would happen to good people. That dying might be a long struggle of suffering, incapacitation and sickness for me.
Name a few of your favorite movies \ books \ websites \ bands:
Movies: American Beauty, Never Cry Wolf, Kundun, Out of Africa, Almodovar’s movies ( Volver, Tacones Lejanos, Todo sobre mi madre,…) Finding Nemo, Alien, The Hours, Woody Allen’s Hannah and her Sisters, Manhattan Murder Mystery, Bullets over Broadway, Titus, 21 grams, Frida, Raise the Red Lantern…
Books: Antonio Damasio’s “Descartes Error", Milan Kundera’s “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” and “Ignorancia”, Paul Bowles’ “The Sheltering Sky", Amélie Nothomb, Janet Frame, Josefina Aldecoa…
Bands: Lila Downs, Lhasa, Philip Glass, Latin Jazz, Simple Minds, U2, some Rolling Stones, Norah Jones, Carmel, Zap Mama, Texas…
What are you really good at? What are you really bad at:
I approach people easily and openly. I’m really bad at the pragmatic/organizational side of life: I think I’m too impulsive.
What is your favourite thing to eat?
Pumpkin, definitely pumpkin with a great green salad & vinaigrette on the side!
How would you like to be remembered?
As a warm and vital person with a bloody good sense of humor.
What is the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to you?
A school principal called me about a job and I thought that it was a friend playing a prank on me…yes, that was pretty embarrassing ;)
Anything else you would like to say:
Lately I feel that our material body sums us up, everything in our experiencing of life and the world has a sensorial, physiological fiber and if we accept that the body is finite and limited we can live an awesome life. To say it briefly: the body is finite and limited, life is fragile and precious.