Em Vanderlinden was born and raised as Emmelyn Gryspeerdt in Gent, Belgium. With an engineer as a father and an art teacher as a mother she was meant to be an architect. Although after studying architecture at LUCA, School of Arts, Gent (Belgium) and working many years as an architect she searched ways to express her feelings and be more creative. It was until she relocated with her family to Munich, Germany, that the urge of painting came to the front. 

She is a self-taught painter, inspired by figurative contemporary artists and the old masters.

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Artist statement:

'Childhood and who we really are, before society tends to push us away from what we originally were meant to be, are the main subjects of my paintings. When we are young, and also when we are very old, we are the most truthfull. It is that 'truth' in people that I am searching for.'