A studio visit with Joris Maes

Antwerp shapes more of Joris Maes's work than a bio line usually captures. Since 2020, that's translated into 118 sold pieces and 88 collectors — among them buyers of "Night Turbine", limited edition of 6.

A day in the studio

Color mixing habits are one of the most personal, least documented parts of a painter's process — the same reference photograph handed to two artists working in the same medium will produce two entirely different palettes, shaped by years of individual habit.

Working in a series lets an artist ask the same question from several angles across multiple pieces, which is a genuinely different creative problem than a one-off — the constraint of returning to a subject is often what produces the most surprising variations.

Where the collectors come in

Discounting norms vary wildly by category — prints tolerate negotiation far better than one-of-one originals, mostly because a print's price was built around a run size from the start, while an original's price is closer to a single, considered number an artist won't move much on.

A marketplace with transparent, published commission rates removes a specific kind of friction that direct sales rarely resolve cleanly: knowing exactly what an artist nets from a sale before either side has to have that conversation directly.

"Night Turbine" remains one of the clearer entry points into Joris Maes's work on Bello — Painted from a rooftop across three consecutive clear nights, with the sky redone each time.