Behind the work: "The Vantage"

One viewpoint, returned to across a year. The figure was the last thing added and the only thing painted from life. Completed in 2024, it's oil on canvas at 980 × 1260 mm, and it comes from Joris Maes's studio in Antwerp — original — full rights transfer.

How it was made

Outside critique, even informal, changes what an artist notices in their own work — a second pair of eyes tends to catch the passage an artist has looked at so many times they've stopped actually seeing it.

Working a piece to completion in a single outdoor session, with no studio retouching afterward, forces decisions an artist working over months never has to make — there's no revisiting a passage once the light that produced it is gone.

What it's worth knowing before you buy

Oil on linen ages differently than oil on canvas — linen's tighter, more even weave resists the sagging and texture-through that canvas can develop over decades, which is part of why it remains the preferred support for work intended to last generations.

Woodblock printmaking survives a genuinely different economics than digital editions: every impression is a physical act requiring the printmaker's hand, which caps how large a run can realistically be and is exactly what gives small hand-pulled editions their particular value.

Like the rest of Joris Maes's work, "The Vantage" ships with a signed certificate of authenticity and a condition report photographed the day it's packed — the same protection that applies to every physical sale on Bello, regardless of price.