The artist behind the art: Harmke Antonissen

4 August 2025

Art is personal, but often there is a barrier between the public and the artist. This week, Belga English brings the creators to the reader in a series of four intimate interviews with female artists in Belgium.

“I am bursting with love. It’s what my work is all about,” says artist Harmke Antonissen outside her gallery. It's located in the Vrijdagmarkt in Antwerp, a square bustling with life, where she often pulls a chair out to observe and draw the people who come and go.

“I’m always looking to witness a …'verbinding'.” She searches for the word in English, but finds that the translation “connection” doesn't do the word justice. A word that conjures images of a bond, verbinding means “a binding between not only those in romantic love, but friend love, familial love, the connection between two people” she concludes.

Respect and love

These types of love, which inform her paintings, she witnessed outside a mosque while on a trip to Morocco years ago. Much like the classroom of observation outside her gallery in Antwerp, she watched as a young man kissed his father’s head over and over. Intrigued, she approached and asked what it meant.

“It's a deep sign of respect and love,” the father answered her. “A love for the elders.”. She noted this and revelled in the diverse shows of love that vary per culture.

Travel inspires Antonissen immensely; she even calls wandering the world a form of self love. However, the journeys she has taken, including in South America, Africa and Cuba, came later in life.

^{Harmke Antonissen © PHOTO GAËLLE BUNTINX}

Antonissen grew up in Cogels Oyslei in Antwerp, famous for its Art Nouveau architecture, flanked by creative neighbours such as poet Herman de Coninck, sculptor Dre Peeters and photojournalist Herman Selleslags.

She found that art was part of her life from childhood, and explains that while her parents were not artists, they were artistic. “My mother made everything beautiful, from flower arrangements to decor. My father renovated each floor of the house as the years went on and had an enormous love of literature.”

"I am bursting with love. It’s what my work is all about"

Anne Rädecker, known as Tante Anneke, or “her second mother”, lived in the house with her family. She was the daughter of the Dutch sculptor John Rädecker, who designed the National Dutch Monument that stands in the centre of Amsterdam. Antonissen credits Tante Anneke with inspiring her and essentially inducting her into the world of art and art history when she took her to museums and galleries.

Female pleasure

Antonissen studied illustration and design at Sint Lucas in Antwerp, followed by time at the Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, where she went on to earn a degree in textile design.

Following her graduation, she worked as an art teacher and eventually an illustrator, where she forged a foundational relationship with the author and erotic counsellor Ann Cuyvers who founded the Erotische verbeelding store in Antwerp.

They collaborated on Cuyver’s books Twaalf orgasmes, Samen Zin and Vaginaplezier. Cuyver’s focus on female pleasure was revolutionary in how Antonissen wanted to portray women in her artwork.

Following an upheaval in her personal life, Antonissen dove further into her work. “I wasn’t consumed by sadness," she says. "I felt I could focus more on my work.”

While she had historically created smaller paintings, the scale of her works grew as she began incorporating more colours and expansive imagery. Upsizing spilled off the canvas and into other ventures as she translated her visual pieces into tangible and sometimes wearable textiles. Woven wall hangings and scarves bore versions of her paintings. She opened her own gallery in 2021, a space that doubles as her atelier.

Like an exposed nerve, Antonissen’s art is raw and emotional. She doesn't hesitate to let the viewer in.

“We could all be a bit more vulnerable,” she says, commenting on how she finds Belgian culture occasionally closed off from acts of expression. Texts and poems accompany her art as a method of reaching out, trying to thaw the cultural demeanour.

Asked whether she is deterred by being passionate in a more “closed” society, she says it creates the opposite inclination in her.

Antonissen excels in finding love and eroticism in seemingly innocuous everyday situations. Recently, she was inspired by an elderly couple: “The wife was sitting at a table slicing strawberries for her husband, who was holding a parasol above her head to shield her from the sun.”

This symbiotic exchange only further fuelled her infatuation with love found in the commonplace.

By removing the faces in her intertwining figures, Antonissen allowers visitors in her gallery to see themselves.

“I tell the story from my perspective. Exploring love and what it means to each individual,” she says. “But sometimes, people recognise their own story in my work, so it then becomes theirs.”

The anonymous figures allows viewers to let the art become their own. “When people come in and see themselves or say “this is me” or “I can relate” it’s the biggest compliment”, she says. “It creates an automatic dialogue with the viewer.”

“I want my art to be in a place where it is loved and respected"

Antonissen is adamant about not reducing eroticism to something base. She sees it as something elevated and intensely connective.

“Everyone sees intimacy differently. What feels normal for someone is almost shocking for the other,” she says. “Intimacy is a dance between energies. Sometimes subtle and slow - a caress, a look in the eyes, hands touching. Other times wild, passionate, joyful, sexy. Or it can feel as a tender and warm as a dance alone.”

Connected life

Her work is a breath of fresh air in a world increasingly filled with AI images and filters, beckoning people to engage with a more connected life. She has witnessed this in how visitors in her gallery react to her work.

“There was a couple that came in and started kissing. Just right in the middle of my studio,” she recalls. “They told me they felt the love coming from the canvases and it inspired them.”

While the majority of the interactions in her gallery are good, Antonissen is reticent to sell her art if she does not feel a “match”. A few years ago, a gallerist from Knokke came in and told her he was going to buy several of her pieces, lingering on an erotic work in a way that did not sit right with the artist.

"They told me they felt the love coming from the canvases and it inspired them""

She told him in the end that she would not sell to him. While her friends were surprised at the amount of money she turned down, she followed her instincts and refused the sale.

“I want my art to be in a place where it is loved and respected,” she said of the interaction. Soon after, a couple came in and bought a piece that she said to this day fills her with pleasure knowing it is in a loving home.

Antonissen is always on the hunt for remedies in a world that increasingly moves away from human interaction. She suggests doing meaningful activities with loved ones, whether that is going to a music festival, visiting a museum, having a meal: “anything that invites … a verbinding”, she finally lands on.

(MOH)

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