EsseBes Painting
Painting has been part of Essebes’s practice since childhood. The current oil-on-canvas work continues an intuitive process of revision, response and discovery.
Explore Painting →About the Artist
Essebes is a Miami-based artist working across painting, fiber sculpture and mixed media.
Essebes graduated from the Utrecht School of the Arts (HKU) in the Netherlands in 1995 with a bachelor's degree in Fashion Design. Her graduation project already revealed an approach that continues through her work today: an interest in form, perception and experimentation. She developed a method of applying dimensional painted patterns to fabric to create optical effects on the body. She was one of four final-year students chosen by the house of Dutch designer Frans Molenaar.
Drawing and painting have been part of her life since childhood, but her practice has never remained confined to a single medium. In 2011, she founded Paint Until You Faint, a painting studio and social art concept. She later developed and taught its Masters Class before the business was sold in 2016.
During the Galveston period, Essebes’s work was represented locally through From the HeART Gallery and Affaire d’Art Gallery. Paintings and prints found collectors through the galleries, while the coastal environment increasingly entered the work and helped shape the development of what would become the Art Charts.
Her subsequent work continued to move between painting and material experimentation. Nautical surroundings helped inspire her Art Charts — paintings incorporating vintage nautical charts — while curiosity about needle felting developed into sculptural works she describes as a form of “3D painting.”
Across these different forms, Essebes works intuitively. She often begins with an idea, subject or emotional direction without deciding precisely how the finished work should look. The work develops through making, revision and response.
Her current painting practice includes The Whole World Is Watching, an ongoing protest series begun in 2026. It remains an open-ended body of work concerned with witnessing, protection, accountability and the vulnerability of children.
Essebes lives and works in Miami.
Miami, Florida
Oil painting · Fiber sculpture · Mixed media
Utrecht School of the Arts (HKU), Netherlands Bachelor's degree in Fashion Design, 1995
From the HeART Gallery and Affaire d’Art Gallery · Galveston, Texas
I rarely know exactly what a piece will become when I begin.
I may know the subject. I may know that I want a jaguar to feel regal, that I'm making a unicorn, or that I'm beginning with a portrait. But I don't want to decide every answer before I've started making it.
Intuition has always been central to my process. Even during my art education, I was encouraged to work in a more structured way — to define and document where a piece was going before it got there. I struggled with that then, and I still resist it now. For me, making the work is part of discovering what the work needs to be.
That is true whether I’m painting with oil, working over the lines of an old nautical chart, or building a form from wool. I often think of my fiber sculpture as “3D painting.” The form changes, but the instinct behind building color, form, character and emotion remains connected.
Sometimes that process takes the work somewhere I didn’t intend.
The Whole World Is Watching began with what I thought would be a beautiful portrait. But it didn’t feel finished. I kept changing it, following what felt unresolved, until the expression and meaning became something entirely different. Eventually I realized I wasn’t simply painting the face I had started with. I was painting someone watching.
Those moments are why I leave room for uncertainty in my work. I’m interested in what can happen when I stop trying to force the outcome and allow the piece to tell me where it needs to go.
Material, dimension and perception
Essebes graduated from the Utrecht School of the Arts (HKU) in the Netherlands with a bachelor’s degree in Fashion Design. Her graduation project explored dimensional painted and stenciled patterns on fabric, using surface, color and form to create optical effects on the wearer. She was one of four final-year students chosen by the house of Dutch designer Frans Molenaar. The medium was fashion, but the underlying interests — material experimentation, dimensionality and visual perception — would continue to surface throughout her later work.
Building a painting community
In 2011, Essebes founded Paint Until You Faint, a painting studio and social art concept. The experience placed painting not only at the center of her own work, but also in the context of helping other people make art. From 2013 through 2016, she developed and taught a Masters Class through the studio. The business was sold in 2016.
Galveston, Texas
After relocating to Galveston, Essebes’s work was represented locally through From the HeART Gallery and Affaire d’Art Gallery. During this period, paintings and prints found collectors through the galleries, while the coastal environment increasingly entered the work and helped shape the development of what would become the Art Charts.
Art Charts — painting into place
Maritime surroundings increasingly entered Essebes’s painting during her time on the Gulf Coast. She began working directly with vintage nautical charts, allowing their lines, markings and geography to become part of the composition. The resulting Art Charts sit between painting and mixed media: the chart is part of the visual history and identity of the finished work. The body of work continued into the early years of her Miami practice.
Read the Art Charts story →Miami
Relocated to Miami, where the Art Chart work continued.
Fiber sculpture — from curiosity to “3D painting”
Essebes’s fiber work began with a simple kind of curiosity: could she do it? Needle felting opened another way of building color and form. Instead of applying paint to a flat surface, she could build an object outward — shaping expression, character, texture and movement directly in wool. She often describes the process as “3D painting.”
Read the story behind 3D Painting →The Whole World Is Watching
A renewed focus on oil and canvas painting led to an ongoing protest series concerned with innocence, protection, witnessing and accountability. The first six documented works are Disbelief, Defiance, Protect, Unjust, Distress and Fury; the series remains open-ended.
Explore The Whole World Is Watching →
EsseBes An ongoing protest series
In 2026, a renewed focus on oil painting brought Essebes back more directly to canvas. The work that became Disbelief did not begin as a protest painting. It began as a portrait — visually compelling, with influences from atomic-punk imagery and vintage aviation gear.
But the painting would not settle. As the expression intensified and the blue eyes emerged, what had begun as a portrait increasingly seemed to be witnessing something. That change opened an ongoing body of work concerned with innocence, protection, witnessing, accountability and the vulnerability of children. The first six documented works are Disbelief, Defiance, Protect, Unjust, Distress and Fury; the series remains open-ended.
Explore The Whole World Is Watching →Today, Essebes works across oil painting, fiber sculpture and mixed media from Miami. These bodies of work can look very different from one another, but they share a process built around experimentation, character, material and intuition.
The Whole World Is Watching is an active current body of work in oil on canvas. Fiber sculpture continues to provide a three-dimensional way of working with many of the same concerns: color, expression, personality and form. Art Charts remain another part of the broader practice — an example of how an existing material or visual system can become the starting point for something unexpected.
EsseBes 
Fiber Sculpture
Needle-felted forms develop through color, form, character and emotion — a process Essebes describes as “3D painting.”
Explore Fiber Sculpture →Read the story behind 3D Painting →
Art Charts
Art Charts bring painting into conversation with vintage nautical charts, place and material history.
Explore Art Charts →Read the Art Charts story →The form changes, but the instinct behind the work remains remarkably consistent. Painting, work on nautical charts and needle-felted sculpture have each given Essebes a different way to follow an idea without knowing exactly where it will lead. She often begins with a subject or a feeling rather than a fixed plan, allowing the work to develop intuitively as she makes it. That willingness to work without a predetermined destination has been present since her years at HKU. While her education encouraged a more structured design process, Essebes repeatedly found herself drawn toward a more intuitive way of making — allowing decisions about form, color, expression and composition to emerge through the work itself. Rather than executing a predetermined image, she responds to what happens as the work develops: adding, removing, revising and sometimes changing direction entirely. Over time, she has increasingly given that intuition greater authority over where the work leads.
Whether the starting point is a regal jaguar, a unicorn, a felted form or the portrait that became Disbelief, the work develops through attention to what it asks for next.
Professional inquiries
Essebes welcomes inquiries from galleries, curators, art advisors and exhibition organizers regarding representation, exhibitions, acquisitions and the availability of original work.
Professional inquiry →