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Robin Vandersteen - Expressive Painter & Illustrator

HIHI HAHA by Robin Vandersteen

HIHI HAHA

HIHI HAHA was created shortly after my first ayahuasca ceremony. My initial idea was to paint a peaceful landscape featuring a tree from my family garden and a swing symbols of home, comfort, and childhood. I took the unfinished painting with me when I moved into my own studio.

Once I had settled into the new space, I found myself staring at the work, overwhelmed by homesickness. Instead of starting over, I chose to completely disrupt the painting by covering it with energetic splashes of paint. Hidden throughout the composition are the words "HIHI HAHA," repeating over and over. The act felt almost like vandalizing my own artwork, but that destruction became an essential part of the creative process.

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By transforming the painting instead of preserving it, I was able to let go of the emotions attached to it. HIHI HAHA became a symbol of accepting change, processing homesickness, and embracing a new chapter in my life.

Year
2025
Medium
Acrylic & spray paint on canvas
Size
100 × 81 cm
HIHI HAHA, detail
I Hope You Are Okay by Robin Vandersteen

I Hope You Are Okay

I Hope You Are Okay was created during a restless night filled with anxiety. In the middle of the night, I began painting in an attempt to process the overwhelming emotions I was experiencing. Because it was around Halloween, I initially started with the sketch of a pumpkin, but halfway through I stopped and left the unfinished canvas in my studio.

Some time later, I returned to the painting with a different mindset. I covered parts of the original composition with expressive layers of spray paint, intentionally transforming the dark atmosphere into something more hopeful. Rather than erasing the difficult emotions, I chose to paint over them allowing optimism to exist alongside fear.

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The small creature in the painting appears anxious and vulnerable as it moves through the darkness. Yet it continues to believe that morning will come. I Hope You Are Okay is a reflection on anxiety, resilience, and the quiet hope that even the darkest nights eventually give way to light.

Year
2025
Medium
Acrylic & spray paint on canvas
Size
78 × 58 cm
I Hope You Are Okay, detail I Hope You Are Okay, detail
WITDAHYA by Robin Vandersteen

WITDAHYA

This work represents an emotion that I still find difficult to fully describe.

It is about that black-and-white way of thinking that sometimes comes back from somewhere deep in the subconscious.

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As children, we do not get to choose the circumstances we grow up in. Don’t get me wrong: I grew up in a very good and safe environment, but there was also a lot of sadness around me. A kind of sadness that is not always visible, but that I could feel.

Some of those fears and emotions are things I still carry with me today.

I work on understanding and processing them, but when you are confronted with them again and again, it can pull you back into that black-and-white space. A place that can somehow feel safe and familiar, even when you know that safety is partly an illusion.

We try to move forward. We build a new life and work through our own pain. But healing can become complicated when the people around you are still carrying their own unresolved pain.

You can love someone, understand them and want the best for them, but you cannot do their healing for them.

Sometimes that helplessness hurts just as much as the sadness itself.

Year
2026
Size
59.4 × 42 cm
WITDAHYA, detail WITDAHYA, detail
Een zotte morgen by Robin Vandersteen

Een zotte morgen

Sometimes a whole artwork starts with a song.

I was listening to an old classics playlist when “Een Zotte Morgen” started playing. While listening, I immediately thought about how chaotic mornings can actually be. Everyone is waking up, rushing somewhere, trying to be on time, drinking coffee and somehow trying to keep everything together.

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So I started drawing my own version of one of those crazy mornings.

The drawing became a collection of little situations happening at the same time. At the school gate, children are causing chaos while parents are standing outside, already busy with everything going on around them. One child gets teased because they are wearing two different socks, simply because the morning at home was so chaotic that nobody noticed.

Elsewhere, people are stuck in traffic on the ring, already stressed before their day has even really started.

Inside an office, people keep walking back to the coffee machine, maybe not only because they need coffee, but because deep down they do not really want to be sitting there.

At home, animals are making an even bigger mess because there was simply no time to clean everything up before leaving.

All these little moments come together into one chaotic morning.

But somewhere inside all of that chaos, there is also someone quietly enjoying their morning and their coffee. Someone who chose to follow their passion and created a life where the morning does not have to feel like a race.

For me, that contrast became the heart of the work.

Maybe we cannot always control how chaotic life becomes, but we can still question what we are rushing towards.

Year
2025
Medium
Fineliners and Promarkers on paper
Size
42 × 59.4 cm
Een zotte morgen, detail Een zotte morgen, detail
I don’t know by Robin Vandersteen

I don’t know

This painting began with shapes that slowly turned into worm-like figures with facial expressions. They seem to look at each other, almost as if they are reacting, communicating, or trying to understand what is going on.

As the work evolved, I sprayed over it and a cat with crazy eyes appeared. The cat feels confused, overwhelmed, and a little absurd like it also has no idea what this is all about.

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For me, this work reflects a strange and playful kind of chaos. It carries a feeling of confusion, humour, and overstimulation, while still remaining colourful and alive. Sometimes things do not need to fully make sense. Sometimes the feeling of not knowing says enough on its own.

Year
2026
Medium
Acrylic paint, acrylic spray paint and ink markers on canvas
Size
80 × 60 cm
I don’t know, detail I don’t know, detail
Bipolar world by Robin Vandersteen

Bipolar world

Bipolar World is an original mixed-media painting that began during a dark and overwhelming period in 2025.

At the time, I was filling the canvas with fragments taken from books, thoughts that were haunting my mind, and things I heard in music. I had also been consuming a lot of media, and it felt like the world was falling apart. The work became a reflection of that mental space chaotic, negative, dark and unsettling. Words, messages and symbols built up across the canvas, expressing the feeling that everything was becoming more extreme, more unstable, and more insane.

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For a long time, the work carried that darker energy. It featured a surprised-looking skull, surrounded by strange cartoons and messages, almost like a visual diary of confusion and fear.

Then, in 2026, I decided to transform it.

I spray-painted over the negativity with bright colours and added a playful, crazy smiley. By doing that, the work gained a whole new depth. What once felt heavy and hopeless became something layered a painting about change, resilience and the act of covering darkness with joy.

For me, this work is about taking something negative and not denying it, but transforming it. It is about painting over fear with colour, and choosing positivity even when the world feels chaotic.

Medium
Acrylic paint, acrylic spray paint and ink markers on canvas
Size
79 × 58 cm
Bipolar world, detail Bipolar world, detail
Divine Feminine by Robin Vandersteen

Divine Feminine

I've created this work after my solo trip to Nepal. When I got to know the local culture there, I felt incredibly drawn to the goddess Tara, a symbol of the divine feminine. That energy brought me back to my core and helped me ground myself when I felt estranged after returning home to Belgium.

In this painting, a woman wearing a hat raises both middle fingers as a bold act of self-expression. The gesture says, "F*** the system, I'm just going to be myself." It represents the decision to live authentically instead of being shaped by other people's expectations. The figure is a reflection of my own journey toward embracing who I truly am.

Year
2026
Medium
Acrylic, paint marker & spray paint on cotton canvas
Size
50 × 40 cm

Created with fluorescent neon colors that glow vividly under UV (black) light, revealing an even more vibrant and immersive appearance.

Divine Feminine, detail Divine Feminine, detail
Doodle Madness by Robin Vandersteen

Doodle Madness

Doodle Madness is the largest doodle artwork I have created so far. Measuring A2, this original drawing is much more than a collection of illustrations it is a visual diary of three months of my life.

My name is Robin Vandersteen, the artist behind Woeste Wortel, and this piece is one of the most personal works I have ever created.

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Every single day, I added something new to the paper. Sometimes it was inspired by an event that happened that day, something I noticed in everyday life, a random conversation, a word, a thought, an emotion, or a fantasy that wandered through my mind. Together, these drawings became a living archive of memories, dreams, and moments that shaped me during that period.

I created this piece in 2025, while working alone in my studio in Beringen, Belgium. Every night I returned to the drawing to add another layer. There were evenings when I would literally fall asleep while working on it, only to wake up moments later with new ideas that seemed to come straight from my dreams. Those dreamlike moments became part of the artwork itself.

The longer you look at Doodle Madness, the more it reveals. Hidden symbols, tiny stories, unexpected characters, personal memories, recurring themes, and secret messages are woven throughout the composition. It is the kind of artwork you can spend hours exploring, discovering something new every time you return to it.

Because every line was drawn by hand and every doodle represents a real moment, this piece can never be recreated. It exists only once.

Created using professional archival fineliners in multiple line weights on high-quality artist drawing paper, this original artwork preserves every detail with exceptional precision.

Whether you are an art collector, a lover of detailed illustration, or someone searching for a truly unique statement piece, Doodle Madness by Robin Vandersteen invites you into a world where imagination and reality blend together.

Year
2025
Medium
Fineliner on paper
Size
59.4 × 42 cm
Doodle Madness, detail Doodle Madness, detail