When you look at Vanderleenen’s paintings, sketches and models, you always see the beginning of the work and the delicate structure of choices that derived from it showing through; all the hesitations, strokes and layers. The work is figurative, but not a naïve return to the imitation of nature. Its intention is perhaps to better understand the experience of objects and bodies, but at the same time it is meant to short-circuit this understanding, or rather, to present the genesis of the understanding and to obscure it in mist, almost literally in Vanderleenens' case.
Vanderleenen's work does though display the wish to capture the observed world in a recognisable image, but then in light of the fact that one time this image was not there, and that it was then made anyway. (Koen Sels)
Marc Vanderleenen painted flowers during the Corona lock down.