My pictorial work forms part of an ongoing exploration of the female portrait, conceived as a space of transformation, tension and metamorphosis. Through my works, I examine the notions of identity, representation and disappearance in a world saturated with images, where female figures appear at once omnipresent, fragmented and in a state of constant reconfiguration.
The face serves as a recurring anchor point, yet it is never stable or fully legible. It is altered, masked, split or dissolved within the pictorial material. This formal instability reflects a broader inquiry into contemporary identity, shaped by digital flows and mechanisms of projection. My figures thus elude any fixed definition: they become zones of transition, forms in transformation.
The mask occupies a central place in this process. Initially narrative, sometimes animal or hybrid, it has gradually become integrated into the painting itself, becoming gesture, material and layer. It no longer merely covers the image: it disrupts it, recomposes it and opens it up to other interpretations. Somewhere between a screen and an apparition, it introduces a constant tension between what is revealed and what is concealed.
My work thus explores painting as a sensitive surface, akin to skin. A membrane upon which the traces of gesture, time and material are imprinted. Skin becomes a central motif here: both a boundary and an interface, it embodies the tension between interior and exterior, visibility and concealment, protection and vulnerability.
Resin, recently introduced into my work, accentuates this dimension of metamorphosis. Through its reflective quality and its ability to capture the environment, it acts as an additional skin, a shifting mirror that draws the viewer into the work. It extends the painting into real space and reinforces the idea of an image that is never complete, always in the making.
The female figure thus becomes a field of experimentation: both subject and medium of transformation, she embodies the issues of visibility, desire and projection. She occupies a liminal space, where the image is never definitive but always in the process of being made, unmade and remade.
Nathalie Pirotte is a Belgian painter who lives and works in Brussels. Specializing in masked portraits, she draws her inspiration from cinema, pink colors, animals, lace, flowers and hybridizations of all kinds. It’s not just a search for identity, but also for the medium of painting in the age of Photoshop. Oscillating between surrealism, pop culture and mythology, his work raises the question of the seduction of painting. Since her studies at Parson’s School of Design in New York and Ensav La Cambre, she has mounted numerous solo exhibitions in Luxembourg, Munich, Cologne and Brussels. Her work has been shown in countless group exhibitions and international fairs, and can be found in numerous museums and private collections.
Exploring the hybridization of commercial and popular imagery sourced from mass media, this body of work uses cut-and-paste aesthetics to construct contemporary portraits. The result is a narrative painting practice, subtly infused with erotic dreamscapes. Pictorial masks and collage elements reveal the tension between viewer and subject—between seeing and being seen. What does one choose to conceal or expose of the body, especially in portraiture, in a post-digital era shaped by the web, video art, performance, selfies, and pornographic webcams? The boundaries between public and private have grown increasingly fluid. These works blend intimacy with hyper-mediated production, abstraction with figuration, gestural impasto with almost watercolor-like transparency. Masked portraits emerge featuring animal-headed figures—rabbits, deer, felines—pagan-like demi-goddesses embodying the spirit of Painting itself. Thick, symbolic paint gestures—pink or black impastos—serve as expressive masks over surfaces that remain deliberately light, ethereal.