Nils Verkaeren Belgium, b. 1980

Nils Verkaeren (b. 1980, Antwerp) is a painter whose practice is rooted in plein air tradition yet operates beyond conventional landscape representation. His work is not concerned with static imagery but rather with presence, impermanence, and movement-registering the shifting conditions of light, atmosphere, and terrain. By engaging directly with landscapes in Belgium, France, Colombia, Mexico, and beyond, Verkaeren creates works that function as both documentation and experience, capturing not only what is seen but what is felt.

Educated at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp (MFA, Painting, 2016), Verkaeren has developed a practice that resists the controlled environment of the studio in favor of direct confrontation with the landscape. He works primarily with oil on canvas and wooden panels, executing his paintings on-site in often extreme or remote locations. The process is as much about physical endurance as it is about perception-walking, setting up, adapting to shifting weather, reassessing, and continuing. His paintings emerge from an ongoing dialogue with nature, where the act of painting is shaped by the very forces he seeks to engage with.

Verkaeren's approach is distinct from traditional plein air painters in that his practice is performative and immersive. He does not seek to merely depict a landscape but to absorb its transitions-how light moves, how wind reshapes a vista, how time alters perception. His canvases do not serve as windows onto the natural world but as registers of time and process, marked by traces of the elements themselves. Rain, wind, and dust often become part of the material composition, integrating themselves into the paint and surface of the work. In this sense, his works become topographies of experience, where the site's presence is embedded within the painting rather than simply depicted on it.

This is particularly evident in series such as "Presence of a Mountain" (2023), where Verkaeren worked in mountainous regions of Mexico, confronting extreme shifts in temperature, humidity, and light. The series does not attempt to define the mountain as a fixed entity but rather as a presence-something constantly altered by weather, movement, and perspective. Similarly, his Scotland Series explores the shifting atmospheres of the Highlands, where mist, rain, and wind continuously reshape the visible world.

Another key aspect of Verkaeren's work is the relationship between movement and erasure. Unlike traditional plein air painters who fix a single moment in time, Verkaeren's paintings often contain multiple temporalities-layered histories of looking, painting, and revising. This can be seen in works where forms are obscured, scraped back, or overpainted, mirroring the way landscapes conceal and reveal themselves through time. His use of paint is fluid and responsive, often allowing accidental marks-paint displaced by rain, wind-driven streaks-to remain as part of the final composition.

A defining characteristic of Verkaeren's practice is his rejection of the traditional studio space. While many painters rely on controlled environments to refine their compositions, Verkaeren's work is shaped by the unpredictability of the outdoors. His paintings are made in situ, often requiring him to physically navigate the terrain, carrying his materials across distances, setting up in conditions that are not always conducive to painting. This physical engagement with the landscape is integral to his process, reinforcing the idea that painting is not simply an act of looking but of moving through and interacting with the world.

This methodology has led him to isolated and often inhospitable locations, where the challenge of working under difficult conditions becomes part of the work itself. In his South American projects, Verkaeren immersed himself in remote natural environments where the boundary between human presence and untouched landscape is continually negotiated. His Bogotá and Buenos Aires series, for example, explore the tension between urban expansion and natural spaces, while his time in Colombia's Andean regions focused on the ephemeral nature of mist, rain, and shifting light.

Verkaeren's 2025 Zwin Project marks a return to Belgium, where he engages with one of the country's last remaining tidal wetlands. The project examines the transitional nature of the Zwin, where land and water, salt and fresh environments continually intersect. Much like his work in Mexico or Scotland, this series is not about static representation but about capturing change itself-the way a landscape is constantly in flux, resisting any fixed definition.

While Verkaeren is deeply embedded in painting, his approach is process-driven rather than medium-specific. His engagement with materiality is evident in the way he allows the conditions of his environment to dictate surface and texture. His canvases often reveal layers of scraped-back paint, exposed ground, or accidental marks that reflect the physicality of his working method. His use of oil paint is gestural and instinctive, favoring broad, sweeping strokes that suggest movement rather than precise delineation.

His work has been compared to Pierre Soulages' exploration of light and texture, as well as to Richard Long's and Hamish Fulton's walking-based practices, where the act of moving through a landscape informs the artistic output. However, where Land Artists often leave minimal traces, Verkaeren's work absorbs the landscape into itself, creating a dialogue between permanence and impermanence. His paintings do not document nature-they respond to it, interact with it, and evolve alongside it.

Verkaeren has exhibited widely in Belgium, France, Colombia, Mexico, and Argentina, with solo exhibitions at Kusseneers Gallery (Brussels), MMaison (Bogotá), Galerie Lloyd (Ostend), and La Romieu (France). His work has been included in major group exhibitions such as Art Brussels, ARTBO Bogotá, and the Zenne Triennale, and he has been the recipient of the Hugo Roelandt Prize for his contributions to contemporary painting.

In addition to his painting practice, Verkaeren has curated exhibitions that investigate the intersection of landscape, abstraction, and process-based art. His curatorial projects include ARE(N)A (Brussels, 2020) and ETAGE22 (Antwerp, 2016), where he brought together artists exploring the tension between environment and artistic intervention.

At its core, Nils Verkaeren's work is an inquiry into how landscape is experienced rather than simply observed. His paintings are not about static representation but about time, transience, and the physical act of being present in a place. His approach challenges traditional notions of plein air painting by incorporating movement, process, and material interaction-blurring the boundaries between painting, performance, and environmental engagement.

As he continues to develop new bodies of work, Verkaeren remains committed to his core questions: How does one translate the experience of place into painting? What is lost and what is gained in the act of representation? And how can painting function as both a record and a transformation of landscape itself?

His ongoing projects-including his forthcoming plein air series in Belgium and South America-continue to push these inquiries further, ensuring that his practice remains one of constant exploration and engagement.