ISABELLE SCHELTJENS

Isabelle Scheltjens is a Belgian artist who has developed a distinctive portrait language through the medium of glass.

Trained at the Antwerp City Institute for Decorative Arts and Crafts (SISA), Scheltjens was introduced to the glass medium by her husband, glass artisan Dirk Neefs, igniting her exploration of materiality, colour and technique.

Using her own technique of fusing thousands of glass fragments of varying sizes, colours and textures at approximately 800 °C, she creates portraits that appear as abstract fields of colour up close and resolve into precise figurative images from a distance.

Her work engages with the tension between fragility and strength, transparency and opacity, distance and proximity, while posing a reflection on appearance and identity in contemporary visual culture.