ISABELLE SCHELTJENS

°1981 |  Belgian

Isabelle Scheltjens studied at SISA, Antwerp (Belgium); she lives and works in Grobbendonk (Belgium). Her husband Dirk Neefs’s glass designs inspired the artist to work with glass.

After portraying her daughter, as from 2014, she refined her unique glass fusing technique: two or three layers of hand-cut pieces of glass (up to 3 x 3 mm), in different colours, textures and sizes, are melted together
at 800°C.

These colourful glass mosaics are like the dots of paint used by the pointillists: an abstract image up close, yet forming an expressive portrait from a distance, through the human eye.

She is a master in colour theory. Only after meticulously watching the positioned cubes from above, she glues them on acrylic glass. Creating a portrait out of nearly twenty-thousand pieces of glass is a monumental task, which requires great craftsmanship.

Since 2015, her artworks have been exhibited worldwide: France, Monaco, Hong Kong, London, South-Africa, Dubai, The Netherlands, Italy, New York … and in prestigious collections, such as the one of the king of Morocco or Lotus Bakeries.

Soccer player Kevin De Bruyne recently bought the magnificent portrait of his wife Michèle. Isabelle makes unique, intriguing and expressive portraits, mainly of women. She is able to create a phenomenal effect: glass mosaics optically fuse together and transform into a stunning portrait.