Odile Kinart

Odile Kinart was born in 1945 in the Belgian province of Limburg and received her artistic education at the Art Academy of Genk. Kinart works in different media, but she prefers to execute her work in bronze and ceramics. As an artist, she wants to express serenity, harmony and light humor in her work.

Kinart is particularly inspired by pre-Columbian art and old African wooden sculptures. She finds ethnic art very appealing - simple, but very expressive. The sheer joy which has gone into making these sculptures is very evident. There is no hierarchy between human beings and animals in her world of sculptures. She sees people and animals as living creatures without that sharp dividing line of more or less intelligence. She feels animals are much more in harmony with life than us human beings.

Kinart evokes a world peopled with charming and benevolent beings. These peaceful characters endowed with massive heads are seated or lying down in nonchalant positions that convey warmth. Kinart is also passionate about poetry. It's gracefulness, thoughtfulness and child-like simplicity and she hopes this is exactly how her sculptures come across. Her characters often are given massive heads and are seated or lying down in nonchalant positions that convey warmth. The are alive and un-posed, sharing an outburst of spontaneity and tenderness. From time to time they drift, motionless, in a canoe or lie stretched out on a comfortable bed or a soft sofa. In this way these couples benefit intensely from the simple pleasures of life.

In order to concentrate her creativity in the optimal way in an intense form, Kinart chooses not to tackle multiple creations at once, but to limit her force of expression to a single project at a time. Generally, she works directly on the clay, without any preliminary study on paper.

Despite, or maybe because of, the apparent simple forms, her sculptures have a strong expressive power. Odile's work can be found not only in her native Belgium, but also in public and private collections in Luxemburg, France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Canada and the USA.