The artist

I am Ineke Indiogine, I paint nature and animals to find the connection with the deepest and most mysterious instinctive part of my being.

The connection with wild nature and animals is present in all of us. It is a precious connection that goes beyond words and can be expressed in a fair and sensitive way through painting.

I left everything in order to paint, to come back to myself, to what makes me vibrate and what frees my instinct. I feel a deep joy when I paint.

I deeply love nature, I feel connected to it.
It regenerates me and fills me up. In nature I feel completely alive and it is an inexhaustible source of inspiration for me. When I am immersed in its beauty and can breathe deeply its purity, my breath becomes creative.

I also feel a deep connection with animals, and painting them is a necessity. In my paintings, watercolours and pastels, animals come to life. That is why I like to call myself Painter of the Living.

Born in 1961 in Catania, Sicily, to a Dutch mother and an Italian father, I grew up between Amsterdam, Sicily and Tuscany, driving with my parents, who lived to travel, across Europe every summer. They gave me a taste for travel, curiosity and otherness. At the age of 20, driven by a strong desire for independence, I settled in Paris, amazed by the artistic and intellectual influence of the French capital, where I met the father of my four children.

My priority has been their education for a long time and I tried to convey the taste for travel, independence, love for nature, beauty and culture to them.

My thirst for learning and discovery has led me to different professional activities, but also to artistic and sporting activities. I studied the classical guitar and the transverse flute for several years, and then turned to martial arts in a very assiduous way: Kung Fu Wushu Shaolin and Tai Chi and Qi Gong, which I also taught for several years. 

In the mid 1990s the practice of meditation, the study of oriental philosophy deeply changed my life, allowing me to be more in contact with the sorrounding, but also with myself. That’s when I felt the desire to paint and I followed the teachings of the painter Hélène de Jessé in Senlis (60). I never stopped painting since then because this turned out to be a fundamental necessity for me.

I went back to live in Tuscany where I had the chance to paint and meditate for many years before settling down in Nice about twelve years ago, resuming a professional activity which took me away from painting and from a part of myself. I decided to quit everything and go back to painting, go back to myself, to what makes me vibrate.

This crazy project, at almost sixty years of age, is to paint, every single day, to devote myself entirely to painting, which accompanies me everywhere I go. Because everywhere, the beauty of nature is what makes me vibrate and feel alive. In a way, my painting is introspective: it is my way of expressing my love for nature and animals, in particular for wild animals, and of giving thanks to them.