martineken:

Ever since she was a little girl she felt the urge to draw everything around her. At the age of twelve, her parents decided to enroll her into the academy of fine arts where she was thoroughly educated in the art of drawing and sculpting.

When Christiane reached the age of seventeen, she decided to try her luck in the city of Antwerp and enjoyed three years of education at SISA, where she devoted herself to Decor, publicity and nature drawings.

After successfully completing those years, Christiane proudly enrolled herself into the Royal Academy of Antwerp, where she would follow two years of life drawing and familiarize herself further with the technique of oil on canvas.

In 1986 Christiane married her first husband and moved to the city of Keulen in Germany, where she would stay for the next six years. During the last two years of her stay, her work was constantly on display at the renowned ‘Gallerie des beaux art’. From there on, some of her work even reached Egypt and Liverpool.

Alas, when Christiane returned to Belgium, many years followed in which she was forced to take on numberless commissions, many of them reproductions.

When she look back at those tiresome years, during which Christiane often felt herself under incredible pressure and even, at times, uninspired, she realize they were a necessary part of her artistic journey. After all, it is by taking on all those commissions that she learned to perfect her technique. Christiane really do think she owe her various skills to that endless list of reproductions, strange as it may sound.

(source)