Ines Thora

Ines Thora (b. 1996, Asse — lives and works in Brussels) approaches painting as a craft. She prefers to create each part of a painting herself: from stretching the canvas to preparing her own pigments. Her work explores not only colour but also the materiality of the surface. Sometimes she paints on traditional (treated or untreated) linen; at other times she chooses transparent, flexible fabrics. She examines how paint behaves on different grounds — how some absorb pigment, others only the oil — leaving behind subtle, unintended drawings in the raw texture of the fabric.

In many of her works, large areas of the canvas remain unpainted. The fabric and stretcher thus become integral parts of the composition, rather than mere supports.
“I like the idea that a painting wants to paint itself,” she wrote during her painting studies at LUCA School of Arts in Brussels. “Each painting is a struggle with emptiness: it begins with the void (the blank canvas) and always tries to return to it — through the absorption of oil paint into the linen. What remains is the pure act of painting, and a significant silence.”

Ines seeks to express what can’t easily be put into words: emotion, meditative presence, the physical act of painting. At times, this becomes literal — she presses handprints and finger marks into the canvas, leaving behind the most personal traces of the artist at work.