Monique Veyt

Year of birth: 1953.
Education: Master of Psychological Sciences.
Living in: Belgium.
Describe your art in 3 Words: Refined, Sensual, Soul-touching.
Your discipline: Creating beauty and illuminating the beauty we all are carrying Within.
Website | Instagram

You transitioned from a career in psychology and human resources to become a full-time artist. What was the driving force behind this major change in your life?

From an early age, I felt a deep longing to understand life more fully and to assist others with that knowledge. When it came time to choose a field of study, architecture crossed my mind, but my desire to delve into life’s mysteries prevailed. Studying psychology at university seemed the logical step. After graduating from Ghent University (Belgium) I worked as a therapist and as a human resources manager. I was profoundly devoted to my work and to the people I was working with, and I’m convinced that in this capacity, I positively impacted many lives.

However, I felt it wasn’t enough: I needed to dig deeper. I had to pursue what I had been longing for since childhood: a more comprehensive understanding of life. Simultaneously, I wanted to infuse more of ‘myself’ into my ‘work’. Around the year 2000, I resigned from my executive position to give my life a new direction. My primary aim was to delve deeper into ‘how life works’, but soon, and quite unexpectedly, I started painting…. Much like Pablo Neruda’s ‘Poetry arrived in search of me’ I can say that ‘One day art, creating art myself, simply emerged from Within me.’ It was an unexpected yet extremely fascinating turn, which I was eager to explore further.

Could I have known then that creating art would become my main occupation? That it would lead me to what I had been aspiring for so long, particularly a deeper understanding of life, of human life, human nature, and existence in general? That this would become my way of reaching out to people, gently and lovingly, saying ‘look how beautiful you are, how many refined gifts you carry within, all warm, sweet and refined… Realize how capable all this makes you of bringing beautiful things into your life and the world? All this without being didactic or preachy, of course… the last thing I want is to be didactic or preachy… “I am not a teacher, I just want to sing the colors of my Soul” I write somewhere. What I wish is simply to share what I feel Within.. and it seems that at birth, I brought with me some gifs to sense beauty, to picture it or put it into words in a way people love to connect with. Between the day I made the pivotal decision to resign from my executive position and now there has been a span of about 25 years during which I have lived in relative seclusion to research, develop, and refine my art further. I wasn’t in a hurry to present my Art and Knowing to the world…Quality wines also start with a long ripening on the barrel don’t they?

Monique Veyt | Lovely nuances of purity | 2021

How does your background in psychology influence the way you create art, particularly in capturing the “inner beauty” of human nature?

I’ll begin by describing the pivotal moment when I first realized ‘that there was something’: One day, I found myself sitting on the floor, surrounded by my initial creations that had spontaneously emerged from within. As I revisited them, titles began to form in my mind – ‘Tenderness’, ‘Human Warmth’, ‘Unfolding’, ‘Bubbles of Warmth’, ‘Mercy’… This realization quieted me, as I sensed these titles represented characteristics we all carry within. ‘Gifts’ seemed a more fitting concept – gifts belonging to our Human Nature, inner gifts that shouldn’t be ignored but recognized as a REALITY! You could call this my ‘aha-moment’. ‘The Beauty of Our Human Nature’ would become my theme – a melody my heart had always been silently singing. (Despite sometimes painful experiences, I had maintained an unwavering belief in the fundamental beauty and goodness of humanity. On my website’s ‘Musings and Poetry’ page, a piece titled ‘The Fairy Girl’ evokes this journey.)

As my work evolved, a fascinating phenomenon occurred: a cross-pollination between my artistic expressions and ‘my’ science, psychology. My creations seemed to point to deeper, often-overlooked realities of human nature and potential. Meanwhile, my scientific, inquiring mind provided curiosity and urged me to transcend the anecdotal, evaluating initial findings for their broader significance. The reactions of people to my first paintings also contributed to this process. I’m grateful for their input! Over the years, this cross-pollination has continued. My art has evolved, my eagerness to create beauty has become ever-present, and my insights into ‘how life works’ have broadened and deepened, thanks to my art.

How do I ‘capture’ our inner beauty and identify it as part of our human nature? This process is encapsulated in the poem at the top of my website’s ‘About’ page: “Beauty is part of who I am. Beauty is part of who you are. Human warmth is part of who I am. Human warmth is part of who you are. A desire to unfold the beauty that I am carrying within me is part of who I am. A desire to unfold the beauty that you are carrying within you is part of who you are. Within me it is sweet and warm. Within you it is sweet and warm.”

The first step is ‘tuning into myself’. This ability to tune into oneself, to feel who one truly is, is a capability specific to our human nature. I’ve become familiar with this process. In these moments, I FEEL aspects of my inner beauty: I feel beauty and understand it as part of who I am; I also feel deep human warmth, among other qualities. Moreover, I clearly feel a longing to bring these qualities into my life and the world. This longing is also part of our human nature, it is innate to it! At the same time I can sense that everyone else carries these gifts within themselves… Hence the words of my ‘statement poem’. I can rely on this in-depth feeling. I’ve refined it over the years (yes, this requires practice, some courage, and especially inner honesty). This way, I’ve become a clear ‘feeler’, and…. ‘knowing myself, I know others’: feeling my own beauty and gifts, I know that others also possess them. It’s that simple. If someone else were to write a similar poem, different traits and gifts might come to the fore, such as bravery and boldness, which are also part of the immense range of human inner possibilities, but which I possess to a lesser extent. For me, human warmth, sweetness, sensitivity, delicacy, and sensuality are more prominent and consequently often appear in my creations. Many people connect with these qualities.

Your work often emphasizes delicacy and sensitivity. How do you achieve these qualities in your pieces, and what role do they play in conveying the message of your art?

Delicacy and sensitivity are inherent qualities we all possess. They enrich our lives when we allow them to flourish, as do many other inner riches. Within me, these qualities are prominent; they’re always in my feeling space. When I feel well, they’re present. When I feel them, I experience joy, serenity, and benevolence. They must be among my ‘core qualities,’ which is why they manifest so frequently in my artistic expressions, be they paintings, writings, or photographs.

Therefore, I don’t have to ‘do’ anything to infuse them into my pieces. My creations simply carry the energy of these qualities. These gifts, innate to our being and expressed in my creations, seem to resonate with many people. You could say that they mirror the beauty of sensitivity and delicacy that those individuals carry within themselves. It would be wonderful if people realized that the sensitivity and delicacy they perceive reflect their own beautiful essence. Isn’t beauty in the eye of the beholder?

Monique Veyt | So many life veins | 2021

Could you describe the process behind one of your polyptychs or intimate installations? How do you approach these complex projects?

With pleasure. They’re somewhat my ‘pampered children’… It all begins with what I call ‘my miniatures’. I enjoy painting small – very small. I marvel at the beauty that unfolds in the intimate space right before me, so to speak, ‘between my arms’, even ‘between my hands’. I refer to these paintings as my ‘miniatures’ by analogy with the miniatures of the Middle Ages and surrounding centuries. Those miniatures ‘illuminated’ manuscripts and later books. I wish my 21st-century miniatures to illuminate our consciousness a bit…

With these miniatures – or their larger siblings – I then create polyptychs and ‘intimate art installations’ suitable for both homes and more public spaces. The ‘intimate art installations’ comprise a number of related paintings, along with one or more magnifying glasses to explore the refined beauty initially concealed. Unexpected details, such as extremely fine lines, curls, and tiny craters, then become visible! This ‘exploring activity’ generates a sweet, relaxing, meditative, and contemplative state of being! Moreover, this process of hovering the magnifying glass over the miniature painting closely resembles the process of ‘tuning into oneself’ to feel one’s own inner gifts and beauty, a central theme in both the wisdom I share and my artistic creations. ‘Wonder’ is what we feel when exploring what unveils beneath the magnifying glass. I can spend hours upon hours, repeatedly viewing and exploring these miniature paintings with a magnifying glass! Wonder opens the heart and mind…

The same applies to the polyptychs, where I bring several related miniatures together. These polyptychs often evoke a sense of sacrality. They often feel like gems to me.

Your art includes diverse mediums, from glass/acrylic panels to macro photography. How do you decide which medium best conveys the message or emotion you want to express?

My creations consistently incorporate elements such as lightness, playfulness, purity, clarity, and sensuality, though the focus can vary slightly. In my polyptychs and intimate art installations, the emphasis is on the process of tuning into beauty, which is often overlooked at a superficial level. The viewer must actively engage: bringing devoted attention, handling a magnifying glass, and opening their mind and heart to wonder. These creations invite gentle interactions. As previously mentioned, the process of tuning into the painting to detect its beauty mirrors the process of tuning into oneself to uncover the somehow hidden inner beauty within the viewer. Here, the cross-pollination of my science and my art is at its strongest. It’s also inherent to these formats that they contain an invitation to somehow broaden consciousness. In this sense, they hold a unique place in my art. I also utilize my gift for articulating feelings and sensations: I provide titles, subtly formulated yet deeply felt, that can guide the viewer a bit in their own introspective process.

The other half of my creative expression – where I place my designs for glass and acrylic panels – is more purely ‘art for art’s sake’ or ‘beauty for beauty’s sake’. I feel an eagerness to create beauty! This eagerness has become ever-present, and I seem to have an infinite inspiration for creating new images and forms. I entrust the production of the glass or acrylic panels or stained glass to specialists, but I love to deliver designs. In my mind’s eye, I envision them in homes, public spaces, and even sacred ones. My wish is to ‘let them radiate’ space, color, purity, serenity, and peace… to transform a place into a serene and joyful sanctuary. Here, I have a more precise vision of the desired outcome, but the designs always carry aspects of what beauty means to me, such as lightness, purity, clarity, refined simplicity, and so on. I hope they can enhance or bring such energies to the spaces where they are integrated.

And oh, my macro photos and close-ups of flowers… All those lovely flowers everywhere! How much they mirror our beautiful gifts of purity, innocence, and refined sensuality! I love to tune into the sensual beauty of flowers! My favorites are white ones with a touch of color… Here too, I ‘tune into’ them and enjoy viewing them from different angles, always close, always intimate, and what I then capture is delicacy, purity, and sensuality. The heart then produces tones that soar high into the heavens! I show their beauty, their refined sensuality… Who wouldn’t want such energy in their home? In their bedroom?

In this way, each of my mediums has its own technique, energy, and perhaps purpose. On my website, I categorize them according to what they represent in terms of gifts of human beauty, but this classification serves mainly to provide some structure to the whole. So, don’t worry too much about the classification!

Perhaps you will ask yourself why I create only pieces that depict beauty? Do I have such a naïve view of life, ignoring the pain in people and in the world? I have tried to also picture the pain, but it doesn’t work for me. The images that come out ‘don’t work’ and my creativity shrinks to dead. Above and beyond: it seems to be my ‘task’ somehow and it is certainly my joy to shine a light on our inner beauty, gits and capabilities and to point to a way out of pain and struggle… my small contribution to the world…

Monique Veyt | Sensuality in White | 2017

What does the concept of “connection while preserving everyone’s individuality” mean to you, and how do you bring it to life through your artwork for families and organizations?

Connectedness with others is a beautiful thing, and this capacity is a human gift. However, above all, we remain individuals, with our unique inner riches and ‘Soul Color,’ as I love to call it. This must not be sacrificed. It is precisely the differences in being that contribute to an interesting and flourishing family, organization, or community. To illuminate the ‘coming together of both aspects’ – connectedness and individuality – I offer a special art service called ‘Beautiful Connections’. This involves creating a group of pieces, such as a series of paintings (it can also be an installation), that begins with a ‘master’ piece and then evolves by taking one or more aspects of that ‘master’ and incorporating new aspects (the uniqueness of that person or department) into each subsequent painting. All of this, of course, is done in my own style. Here, I bring my capacity for easily sensing people and situations, which adds depth to the experience and the art. As with every commissioned work, there is pleasant communication.

A note to finish: Of course, ‘Atelier Monique Veyt‘ has an official postal address, but do you know where the real  ‘Atelier Monique Veyt’ is? Indeed, it is Within me. It is there were every single creation originates…