Katrien Doms’ tormented landscape is created by burning the top layer of wooden panels. She creates deserted plains, dried-up waterfalls and charred fields.
Katrien Doms’ tormented landscape Water-Fall.
Katrien Doms (1977, Belgium) is one of the visual artists who has specialized in wooden objects that she processes with fire. Her wall panels are largely created outdoors, in varying weather conditions. She uses the unpredictability of wood combustion to reveal organic forms, reliefs and subtle textures in wood. This method gives her sculptures a character of coincidence and natural force at the same time.
Doms’ series title such as ‘Ukiyo‘ refers to the idea of transient landscapes and ‘floating worlds’. By sanding off the charred top layer, the direction of the wood grain becomes clearly visible. A sculptural form emerges — a tension field between destruction and revelation.
Her treatment with fire, sometimes multiple times, is intended to bring depth and ‘speech’ to the surface of the wood: what burns disappears, but what remains acquires a matured, almost poetic presence.
Journey to survive
Katrien Doms first worked as an interior architect. She later chose to start making sculptures that, hanging on the wall, give their own story to the furnishing of spaces. ‘It wasn’t my plan to become an artist; it was a journey to survive. The source is a physical trauma, the worst pain. I crawled across the floor of daily pain. But that’s not poetic enough to talk about, so I rarely allow journalists or other people into my life’.
I would like to classify her work under Dendroism, where the wood itself largely determines the narrative. I would love to talk to her, but she lives a reclusive life, her mobile phone on ‘mute‘. On her Instagram account she writes: ‘Don’t let me explain why I never appear at exhibitions, why I never call. The little things dear people, the little things. That is happiness’.
Doms finishes the sculptures after long sanding with uncolored oil and wax. She lets weather and seasons partly determine when a piece is finished — rain, frost or heat can literally change the work during the making process. ‘For one work I needed a wind force of about 6 kilometers per hour. During the making process, two works failed due to the sudden turning of the wind’.
And: ‘My work withstands an enormous shock: when the wood cools down after burning, it goes from 800 degrees Celsius back to 2 degrees in winter’. This attitude places her work between contemporary craft, sculpture and design.
Nature’s Revenge
I find her titles beautiful. Some examples: ‘Gone with The Wind‘, ‘Into Open Waters‘, ‘Lakeside Serenade‘ and ‘Hope Springs Eternal’. The names of the panels are romantic, while I associate the sculptures themselves more with scorched earth. And yes, one of her sculptures is called: ‘Nature’s revenge‘. Mother Earth’s revenge is certain and sure, now that sustainable thinking is increasingly disappearing in fossil fumes.
Her wall objects are shown and traded internationally. Doms’ sculptures are for sale through her Sarah Myerscough gallery and design platforms. Her pieces have also been shown at international fairs, such as Design Miami Fair. She has also shown work at exhibitions in London.
Side view of her work Ukiyo 054.
On Instagram she thanks everyone for their interest and the patience that people have who are saving for her work. She is therefore thinking about making some smaller works. But she finds it hard to part with those more modest wall installations. ‘While the large works leave without hesitation’.
Her art invites long viewing — the burning has something mythological and is at the same time very much of today. Doms puts wood as a material back at the forefront of a discourse about craft, nature and imagination. Her way of working inspires me, for example in my own experiments with waste pieces of cross laminated timber (CLT). I will definitely continue on this path, after completing my sculptures Wonderstones and Burning ballerina. Especially when I see the stories that Katrien can bring out of wood.
Jan Bom, September 24, 2025
Photos Tijs Vervecken
