ARTTYCO TALKS
Josephine Verbist explores wonder, vulnerability, and transformation through paintings shaped by memory, movement, and raw emotion.
ARTTYCO TALKS | June 17, 2026.
EPISODE #29: JOSEPHINE VERBIST
1. You’ve described painting not as a choice, but as a form of survival — a place where thought can breathe. How does this sense of urgency shape the way you begin and stay with a painting?
J: Painting began for me as a way of surviving. It was a way of holding myself upright in a world that felt unsafe and overwhelming, a world in which I could not yet find my place. That search felt lonely. In paint I found breath; in image, I found myself again.
Now that I feel more grounded, painting is no longer about survival, but about being.
I am curious, translating lived experience into images. I move through the world with a painter’s eye, attentive and open to wonder. Images gather in my mind; they impose themselves, tumbling over one another and pressing to come out.
A painting never becomes exactly what I imagined beforehand. The work responds and develops a voice of its own. There is an ongoing process of making, and within that continuous movement new ideas keep emerging. My work is an ongoing search. It does not offer answers, but raises questions.
Often, I work on several paintings and drawings at once, allowing them to influence, strengthen, or challenge one another.
With each work, I try to reach a moment of intensity: a point where the painting feels inevitable, exactly as it should be — a place where head and heart meet.
2. Your works often reveal their own making: layered gestures, pauses, and visible missteps. What role do interruption, doubt, or imperfection play in your process, and why is it important for these traces to remain visible?
J: My curiosity means that I absorb a great deal of what happens around me. Finding balance within this is not always easy.
The newspaper spreads terrible stories every day, laying out a chaotic world filled with senseless violence. Sometimes I wish I had not read certain things, such as an account of how someone was tortured. How do I leave this behind and continue where I left off?
At the same time, I experience a world that can be breathtakingly beautiful.
There are so many impressions coming from the people around me. I am fortunate to feel surrounded by an intensely warm family: my husband and children, and around them a close circle of friends.
I also have a modest psychotherapy practice, where I hear the stories of people who are struggling and entangled in their lives. These stories leave a deep impression on me. It is a privilege to walk alongside them for a while.
All these experiences create a field of tension between beauty and fear, between light and darkness, between eroticism and decay.The working process is a movement from inside to outside: searching, doubting, failing, and continuing. Failure is part of the path forward, and I want that process to remain visible. In many ways, this path runs parallel to my own life. All the impressions that enter me find their way into my work. It needs to touch, to move, to reveal how vulnerable life is.
I do not paint to please. I paint to be.
3. Travel is not just a context in your life, but a rhythm that seems to enter the work. How do journeys, distance, and temporary ways of living influence the emotional landscapes of your paintings?
J: I have nomadic blood and feel the need to leave regularly. I want to step outside my familiar frame and move beyond my own limitations. And… I want to experience adventure.
One drawback is that I cannot work while traveling, although I naturally gather ideas along the way. I work exclusively in my studio, where I move within what might look like chaos, though for me it is not chaos at all. I work, play, tear, and paste.
I love to play.
Travel creates space and distance from everyday life. It offers a kind of helicopter view: What am I doing? What do I want to change? While traveling, I paint in my head and make notes.
I am also curious about other cultures, about meeting people and fellow painters, about discovering distinctive landscapes and cities. All of this adds even more colour to my life.
Together with my partner, I have travelled through many countries in South America. We planned the journeys ourselves and travelled in a jeep with a rooftop tent. Later, we explored different countries in southern Africa, where there is still so much to discover. Travelling through the wilderness there feels incredibly exciting.
When I travel, I write a great deal.
4. Your paintings hold a tension between softness and rawness, intimacy and resistance. How do you navigate this balance, and what kind of experience do you hope the viewer allows themselves to stay with?
J: I usually work on the floor, where I feel the strongest connection with the work. I can live within it for a while and move around it. I can feel what I am doing.
I like to touch.
There is always music.
I dance.
My strength lies in working with paper. It took time to discover this. A gallery owner, with whom I had a close connection, once told me that my collages completely coincided with who I am. When he said this, I immediately knew and felt it was true. After that, it no longer felt difficult to stop making “a painting.” Now, I paint on paper.
Paper allows me to tear and shape, to let things rest, to let them deteriorate, to cover what I have made and tear it away again, to draw on it, colour it, and play with it. By playing, I simply mean wandering around my studio, discovering here and there what I might use. I may find a small stick and a piece of paper, add some colour, until play naturally turns into seriousness.
It is important for me to begin this way. I recognize the child in myself. This is who I was, and who I still am.
Finishing a work, perfecting it, does not really suit me. I want to preserve its rawness. I try to find a balance between letting the work go, leaving it unpolished, and yet allowing it to feel complete.
As I mentioned earlier, I struggle with how to live in a world filled with so much injustice and indescribable suffering, while at the same time allowing myself to enjoy the beauty of that very same world. How can I work with people who are deeply entangled in their lives and still allow myself moments of joy? How can I love, while knowing and feeling the deep despair of others?
How do you combine horror with pleasure?
I paint what occupies me. I believe there is no other way than to try to transform rawness into beauty. That is where hope begins.
5. Rather than offering conclusions, your work feels like an invitation — a moment suspended in becoming. When someone stands in front of your paintings, what kind of presence or awareness do you hope they encounter?
J: I often hear people say that the amount of black in my work makes it feel sombre. But how can I work with an abundance of colour when the world itself can feel so dark?
Perhaps my work brings the viewer into a state of uncertainty or confusion. I hope that something of the feeling of my search finds its way through — my attempt to understand how I can relate to the world around me.
I hope the viewer is moved.
