Background

In 2003, Belgian born artist Elisabeth Van der Voort painted a series of vibrant studies of fruit on large canvases. When London art dealer Stephanie Hoppen visited her in Belgium to interview her and to photograph her home for the book The New Decorating with Pictures, she noticed the contemporary fruit paintings and invited Van der Voort to exhibit them in her London art gallery. In the spring of 2003, Van der Voort held her first solo exhibition at the Stephanie Hoppen gallery in London. From that moment on, she succesfully took part in many group & solo exhibitions and developed her own style in still life with a personal subtle color palette. In January 2006, her work was accepted to be exhibited at the London Art Fair.

Her discovery by Stephanie Hoppen and the inclusion of her work in Hoppen’s book The New Decorating With Pictures launched her career both in the UK and the USA.

Betty Van der Voort continued to explore other aspects of her medium, and by 2008 she returned to purely abstract work, which was shown for the first time at the London Art Fair 2009. The resulting pictures can be seen as a reflection of the years she spent as an interior designer.

In her recent work, that includes drawings in charcoal on paper or board, as well as paintings, Van der Voort introduces mostly male figures as part of an intense scene. Some of these 'snapshots' of a scene are proposed as polaroid pictures in charcoal on paper, others in large colourful paintings.