Hi, my name is Astrid van de Ven. I live in Voorburg, the Netherlands together with my husband and two sons. I have always had an interest in art and took exam in art history and drawing at highschool. When I had to choose between the Art academy and Communication studies at the University I however chose the latter.
I ended up having a busy international career in Product Management in technology companies. My career gives me great opportunities to travel the world, meet with people from all cultures and get inspired by beautiful places and fantastic food.
“I get hungry when I look at your paintings”
But the interest in art never went away and some time ago I decided I wanted to make more time for my ‘bucket list’. I picked up painting again. I started weekly Art classes and spent a lot of time educating myself by watching training videos and examples on the internet. After a while I decided to learn how to build a website for my paintings and I succeeded because otherwise you wouldn’t be able to read this :-). I also started posting ‘creation videos’ on social media of my paintings.
What do I paint: Because I also love to cook and try out new receipes, I found the perfect combination by painting food items, which I first photograph myself. I love the colors and different textures and they make me happy. Next to food still lifes I paint portraits in different styles which I also really enjoy. And I am sure there will be other topics.
My style: My culinary paintings and part of the portraits are made with oil paint and recently I also started painting food in acrylic. I have a preference for compositions with a dark background color when using oil paint. I use high quality canvas boards and paint. I would describe my style for these paintings as realistic with a loose touch, inspired by some of the old masters, but I’ll leave that to you to judge.
To challenge myself to try out some different styles I also started to work with acrylics and mixed media techniques which led to some pretty colorful portraits which were a lot of fun to make.
Painting made in highschool when I was 17 years old. Based on ‘Christ crowned with thorns’ by Hieronymus Bosch (1490-1500). I called my version ‘Religious struggle’.