Can Painting Slow You Down in a Fast World? Artist Spotlight Ellen Claes

We scroll faster than we think. Notifications, feeds, tabs and contemporary life rewards velocity over attention. Ellen Claes' paintings do the opposite.

They root themselves in observation and slowness, transforming the infrastructure we ignore (control panels, stairwells, construction zones) into sites that demand you stop.

This isn't decorative painting.
It's resistance.

**Ellen Claes** in her studio with her dog Pixie, featured in the Artist Spotlight for **Catapult – The New Munchies Art Club.** *Image courtesy of the artist.*

Ellen Claes' Paintings of Infrastructure and In-Between Spaces

Based in Alken, Belgium, Ellen Claes paints the parts of the built environment we're trained not to see. Her recent work focuses on empty interiors: hallways, stairwells, transitional spaces where human presence is implied but absent.

Belgian artist **Ellen Claes** paints daily, offering a sneak peek into her studio and a view of her recent works. *Image courtesy of the artist.*

Painting by Belgian artist Ellen Claes titled Want to get there? Take a step back, showing a geometric staircase in yellow and gray tones. Her titles are an essential part of her practice, inviting reflection on distance, rhythm, and perception. Image courtesy of the artis — **Ellen Claes**, *Want to get there? Take a step back.* Titles play a key role in Claes’s work, guiding viewers into her reflections on rhythm, space, and perception. *Image courtesy of the artist.*

A control panel covered in colored buttons (yellow, red, blue, green) becomes a totemic object. Stacked pipes at a roadwork site glow against vibrant green trees. A red staircase spirals into itself, the perspective vertiginous, unsettling.

Claes describes her subject as "the moment before something unseen happens", that suspended state where everything feels charged but nothing has occurred yet.

**Ellen Claes**, *(left)* *I live between concrete walls* and *(right)* *Every arrow points somewhere I’ve already been.* Both works on paper balance structure and mystery, where the titles act as quiet keys to her emotional architecture. *Image courtesy of the artist.*

The silence. The tension. The possibility that something could shift at any second. She's living in that space personally, navigating things that make the fragile in-between more than conceptual. That sense of waiting, of quiet threat, has become the core of her work.

She paints intuitively, searching for images that trigger her fragments of domestic architecture, sometimes from her own house.

Painting by Belgian artist Ellen Claes titled The ideal place to decide nothing (De ideale plek om niets te beslissen). A small tiled bathroom with a sink, shower, and soft light evokes calm and introspection, characteristic of Claes’s quiet observational style. . — **Ellen Claes**, *The ideal place to decide nothing* (*De ideale plek om niets te beslissen*) Gouache on canvas. A quiet interior scene where stillness becomes a form of reflection. *Image courtesy of the artist.* Image courtesy of the artist

The work happens in her storage room, at a table next to the washing machine. Not romantic, but real. These aren't neutral documentations. Claes uses color shifting between muted grays and intense reds, deep blues to charge each scene with psychological weight.

The paintings ask: what happens when you actually look at the systems you're embedded in, and the spaces where everything still feels possible?

Why Slowness Matters Now

We're living in the fastest moment in human history. Information moves at digital speed. Attention spans shrink. The contemporary condition isn't just distraction, it's structural. Platforms profit from velocity. Algorithms reward engagement.

Stopping to look at a painting, really look, becomes a radical act.

Claes' practice positions itself explicitly against this pace. Her artist statement opens with "slowness -a quiet resistance against the pace of contemporary life."

That's not metaphor. It's method.

**Ellen Claes**, *(left)* *Everything fades into another layer of grey* and *(right)* *Alone in a place meant for passing through.* Gouache on paper and gouache on canvas. Claes describes “an undercurrent of tension, as if something has just happened or is about to unfold.” Stopping to really look becomes a quiet, radical act. *Image courtesy of the artist.*

Painting by Belgian artist Ellen Claes titled Old toys from a miner’s house in Limburg, Belgium. Waiting in silence. Depicting wooden toys in muted tones, the work merges Claes’s daily drawing practice with her move toward figurative storytelling. Image courtesy of the artist. — **Ellen Claes**, *Old toys from a miner’s house in Limburg, Belgium. Waiting in silence.* The Belgian artist expands her daily drawings into figurative experiments that connect her abstract compositions with quiet, narrative moments. *Image courtesy of the artist.*

The spaces she paints amplify this resistance. Hallways and stairwells are transitional, places we move through to get somewhere else.

But Claes stops time inside them. The empty subway hallway with its pink-and-black checkered floor. The industrial control panel with its tangle of cables. These images force duration. You can't glance at them the way you glance at infrastructure in real life. The paintings hold you.

And here's the tension: the emptiness isn't peaceful. Claes describes "an undercurrent of tension, as if something has just happened or is about to unfold." Her color choices, those deep reds, those stark whites against muted grays, create unease.

**Ellen Claes**, *Want to get there – Take the next step.* Left: the painting in acrylic and gouache on paper. Right: the original staircase that inspired it. Both works echo each other through their geometry and powerful use of red, showing how Claes transforms observation into abstraction. *Image courtesy of the artist.*

You slow down not because the image is calming, but because it's charged. That psychological weight is what makes the slowness stick.

It's personal for her living through uncertain transitions makes these spaces feel lived-in, even when they're empty.

Belgium art scene , contemporary artist you have to know , Ellen claes with a artist feature on catapult munchies art club — **Ellen Claes**, *This abacus is helping me ease back into reality.* One bead for each peaceful, nap-friendly day I’ll miss. Letting go of rest is also a verb. The work captures Claes’s poetic precision and her way of turning simple objects into emotional markers of time and recovery. *Image courtesy of the artist.*

The Uncanny Charge of Everyday Infrastructure

Claes doesn't paint dramatic subjects. She paints control panels. Pipes. Staircases. Signs that read "Exit over victria / 10 rue de l'avi." These are the objects we're trained to ignore,the functional background of contemporary life.

But isolation and attention transform them. The control panel in Pressing Every Button becomes totemic, almost ritualistic.

ellen claes, Architectural grid patterns in grey, yellow, and blue tones evoke stillness and unease. Claes notes an “undercurrent of tension” as if a moment has just passed or is about to happen. Image courtesy of the artist. — **Ellen Claes**, *Pressing every button* Gouache and acrylic on paper. A study of overload and rhythm, where tangled cables and glowing switches turn into a visual symphony of control and surrender. *Image courtesy of the artist.*

Its colored buttons (yellow, red, blue, green) glow against black machinery and tangled white cables. The composition is frontal, direct, unavoidable. You're not observing infrastructure. You're confronting it.

This is where Claes' use of color does its work. The muted grays and whites create neutrality, but the sudden bursts of red, blue, yellow charge the scene with emotion.

colorful, outside painting , construction side. the titles of the artist are completing her conceptual work, Ellen claes perfectly catch the everyday life — **Ellen Claes**, *Roadworks Are Rarely a Joy to Look At* Gouache on paper. Stacked pipes with red and blue caps sit against lush green foliage, transforming a mundane roadside scene into something strangely alive. The title is wry and almost sarcastic, roadworks are rarely joys to look at, except here they are. Image courtesy of the artist.

In Roadworks Are Rarely a Joy to Look At, stacked pipes with red and blue caps sit against vibrant green foliage.

The title is wry, almost sarcastic, roadworks aren't joys to look at. Except here they are, rendered with enough care that you see them differently. The mundane becomes strange. The familiar becomes unsettling.

Claes describes this shift in her statement: "I explore the fragile boundary between familiarity and estrangement."

jumping into the void with Ellen claes , explore the fragile boundary between familiarity and estrangement. — **Ellen Claes**, *Midlife whispers be serious, but he answers with a somersault.* Acrylic and gouache on paper. A figure tumbles across a field of red and blue, caught between play and collapse. The work feels both defiant and tender - a reminder that humor can be a survival strategy, that falling is sometimes another way of staying alive. *Image courtesy of the artist.*

Painting by Belgian artist Ellen Claes titled Cabinet of Chaos (Rommelkast). Depicting a cluttered shelf filled with folded fabrics and scattered color, the work transforms everyday mess into a poetic study of rhythm, warmth, and care. Image courtesy of the artist. — **Ellen Claes**, *Cabinet of Chaos* (*Rommelkast*) Gouache on paper. A jumble of folded fabrics, colors, and textures becomes a portrait of lived-in beauty. Claes turns domestic disorder into quiet harmony, reminding us that imperfection often holds the most truth. *Image courtesy of the artist.*

That boundary is psychological. We know what a staircase is. We've climbed thousands. But an empty red staircase, painted with intensity, becomes something else, a site of vertigo, of questions.

Where does it lead?
Why is no one here?
What just happened?

About Ellen Claes

Ellen Claes is a self-taught Belgian painter based in Alken, known for her explorations of empty interiors and overlooked infrastructure.

Her recent shift from abstraction to a more figurative language focuses on transitional spaces, hallways, stairwells, roadwork sites, that bear traces of human presence but reveal no one.

Painting by Belgian artist Ellen Claes titled Beneath the Surface, the House Breathes. Depicting colorful pipes and valves in blue, red, and yellow, the work transforms domestic infrastructure into an abstract study of rhythm, balance, and quiet vitality. Image courtesy of the artist. — **Ellen Claes**, *Beneath the Surface, the House Breathes* Gouache on paper. Pipes and valves become a quiet anatomy of a home, where structure turns into rhythm. Claes reveals the unseen systems that keep life moving, intimate, ordered, and strangely alive. *Image courtesy of the artist.*

Working primarily in gouache and acrylic on paper and canvas, Claes paints intuitively from her storage room studio, capturing what she calls "the moment before something unseen happens."

Her practice roots itself in slowness and observation as forms of resistance against contemporary speed, while exploring the psychological weight of liminal spaces during personal transition.

Final Words

Can painting slow you down in a fast world? Claes' work says yes but only if you let it. Her control panels, stairwells, and roadwork sites don't offer escape. They offer attention. And attention, sustained and deliberate, might be the most radical act left.

Follow Ellen Claes on Instagram for more daily artworks.