Faces Painting

Ida Heylighen is a Belgian based artist. She was born in 1994 in Brussels and moved to a small village at the age of sixteen. It was here, surrounded by nature and silence, she started practicing art. It began with drawing and writing, but she evolved into painting and making jewelry. At the age of nineteen, she enrolled into "jewelry design and silversmithing" at the PXL-MAD academy for one and a half year. After being told that she wasn't "creative enough", Ida left the program and enrolled the teacher training. Due to her great school results, she was accepted in an international internship. In 2018 she left Belgium and went to live in Paramaribo, Surinam, for three months. Here she taught arts and worked as a volunteer for a creative agency that kept underprivileged teenagers and kids off the streets. June 2018, she graduated with distinction as an all-round art teacher. Since that moment, she has been teaching art to young people. Ida never stopped creating art herself - being a teacher by day, but an artist by night. Her art really gained importance to her when she got diagnosed with cervix cancer. The only way to clear her head, was by painting. She got officially in remission, after surgery, in February 2021. Her style is rather abstract, but with pop-art elements (bright colors, humor, symbols of the Western consumption society, ...) and all of her paintings include a realistic eye. Eyes have always inspired Ida. They're the core of a person's being, she believes. Nowadays, people can advertise themselves as someone they're not, but the eyes always tell the truth. She incorporates a realistic eye, because art (and life) are never what it seems at first glance. It's up to you, to see further than what reaches the eye. You should peel off all the layers, to discover the truth. All works can be seen at Instagram: Instagram.com/heylighenida.