I didn’t leave architecture because I had some grand plan. Financially, I couldn’t keep going. But in hindsight it was a real turning point, because it pushed me further into self-discovery.

It taught me what courage actually looks like: disappointing my family, choosing the unknown anyway, and not letting fear decide for me. That’s still the mindset I bring into the studio. Every new project feels like entering territory I don’t fully understand yet. Architecture wasn’t my calling, but it helped me find the one that is. I still admire architects and their vision, especially the way they shape interior space. My first exhibition came from that fascination, centered on interior architecture and guided by a feeling that was leading me somewhere I couldn’t name.

I’m still searching for a place in the world that truly feels right. Antwerp has been an important part of that journey, and that’s okay. If I go deeper, I think every city teaches me something about my interior life. In Antwerp, those parts have come closer to the surface, and I have to face them every year. Even though it’s not my city, it has taught me a lot, especially about the parts of myself I’d rather avoid. In a way, that’s a positive thing, right?

There isn’t a single answer, but most of the time it begins with something intimate and quiet, a hint of mystery that I can’t fully explain yet.

The sound of the waves and the breeze. Then piano, violin, and the church.

My mother has lost her sense of smell, and my husband has lost sight in his right eye. It’s been hard for both of them. I don’t know what to respond, but I believe that when one sense fades, other forms of awareness and intuition can emerge.

I wouldn’t say I owe Jung an understanding of my being. When I first read him, I mostly recognized things that were already familiar to me. It didn’t feel like I learned those ideas from him; it felt like they were already inside me. What I owe Jung, and other philosophers too, is language. They gave me words that helped me understand myself more clearly. And what I reject in Jung is also clear: his views and behavior toward women are complicated and often troubling, especially from a contemporary perspective.

Emotional pain is real, especially the kind that can’t be seen or easily named.

Over-erasing and correcting too much used to feel like a problem I needed to fix. Now I see it as a way of building layers that can still surprise me later.

I carry a longing for my younger self, for the broken bond from my childhood that I share with my mother, and for a kind of humanity so profound it can split the heart in two.

The practical side of life, the business, never really leaves.

When I say transformation is destructive, I mean life can break you apart without asking permission. So I don’t really choose to destroy, not consciously. But over time I’ve realized we sometimes have to move close to destruction for something beautiful to emerge. It’s in that breaking, in that surrender, that real transformation begins.

I think it already happened once. I was cooking with my husband and he arranged an eggplant with two eggs beside it. It looked like a penis, or maybe a middle finger, and we laughed. Later I felt unmotivated to return to my usual work, and I wanted something more cynical, darker, with humor. I painted the eggplant and the two eggs just as they were, in my studio palette. That might be my cynical painting: funny, bored, and still somehow honest, maybe even romantic.

Haha, good one. Right now I’m circling the threshold of being completely alone, disappearing for a while into the middle of the jungle.

I can’t think of a work whose meaning changed for me after it left the studio. Maybe that will happen in the future. But every work does take on new meaning once it’s seen by others, when it no longer belongs only to me.