My name is Annemarie Hoogewys. I was born in Ghent in 1966. Images have been part of my life from an early age. As a child, I attended youth art studios where we were encouraged to think generously and work at a large scale, painting directly onto walls. These formative experiences shaped my visual imagination and instilled a lasting sense of freedom—an openness to space, gesture, and material that continues to inform my work today.

My artistic path runs alongside a long career as a physician. While encountering human vulnerability on a daily basis in my medical practice, I studied painting—initially in a figurative language—exploring human presence in relationships, dreams, and moments of pain.

I received five years of formal training in painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Tielt, followed by two years of drawing at the School of Art in Ghent. Alongside this education, I developed an experimental approach, working with alternative techniques such as printmaking, etching, and woodcut.

During the pandemic, my practice took a more introspective turn. Intensive coloured‑pencil studies, combined with long, quiet walks, led me to observe and decipher the underlying structures of the natural world. This process gradually brought me back to oil paint.

 

My work has been shown in various local group exhibitions, including the annual exhibition at Borluut Castle in Ghent and Promenade au Sud in Viroinval, where I was awarded laureate.