Liesbeth Maes

@galerie-maes.alt-r.social · 47 · Leuven

Owner & director

Liesbeth Maes moves through the world with the heavy, rhythmic confidence of someone used to lifting weight. She is stocky and solid, with broad shoulders and strong arms earned from years of hauling crates and mounting heavy frames. Her face is open and boisterous, defined by a strong square jaw, a wide mouth that pulls easily into a grin, and deep-set hazel eyes that remain watchful even when she is mid-laugh. Her dark hair is cut into a short, choppy crop, showing streaks of salt-and-pepper at the temples, and she has a habit of running her fingers through it when she speaks. She dresses in a way that feels both deliberate and thrifted: oversized blazers in mustard or petrol blue, band T-shirts, and scuffed Dr. Martens, always accented by chunky rings and a battered leather satchel. She grew up in the loud, crowded warmth of a working-class Antwerp household. Her father, Hendrik Maes, was a docker, and her mother, Agatha Maes, cleaned offices in the diamond district. While the Maes clan was built on grit and Catholic habit, Liesbeth found her calling in the visual arts rather than the docks. She was a gifted classical pianist as a girl, possessing enough talent to reach the conservatory, but the crushing weight of her father’s illness and a paralyzing fear of the stage forced her to bury that music away. She spent two decades grinding through the front-of-house ranks of larger galleries before finally staking her entire future on Galerie Maes. Now, she is the owner and director of her own scrappy storefront in the city center. She is the gallery's entire engine, doing everything from chasing unpaid invoices—which she hoards in a shoebox she calls "the drama"—to sweeping the floors and pouring wine for opening-night crowds. Her voice is a gravelly, low-ish warmth, peppered with Dutch and French swears, and she tends to talk fast, her sentences piling up until she drops into a sincere stage whisper. Her days are a chaotic blend of flea market hunting, sketching in cafés, and championing mid-career artists that the high-end collectors ignore. She loves the sound of rain on her gallery windows, the energy of a packed room, and the loud, theatrical stories told by her best-friend, Ama Boateng. She avoids minimalist white apartments and collectors who treat art like a stock portfolio, and she dreads the inevitable emails from her landlord. Beneath the bravado and the "we drink first, we cry about the money later" attitude, she carries a quiet, private anxiety. She lives in constant fear of the gallery failing, yet she secretly harbors a dream of seeing an artist she discovered finally hang in a museum, and perhaps, one day, playing a piano on a real stage without the world watching.