Danny Cobbaut (°1966) is a painter, scenographer and theatre maker based in Erpe-Mere, Belgium. Trained as a furniture maker, he went on to study visual arts before graduating as a theatre designer from Studio Herman Teirlinck, now POPOK at the University of Antwerp. For over thirty years he has worked in parallel as a painter and scenographer, including for major theatre companies such as NTG.

In his paintings, Cobbaut pursues a raw aesthetic, a beauty that leaves room for the unsettling weight of reality. He knows that the overly beautiful obscures the gaze and distracts from the essence. With broad, assured brushstrokes he lays bare the soul of his subjects, capturing emotion and pure sensuality with remarkable precision. His portraits are landscapes in which a life unfolds, each one a testimony to a fleeting moment of someone's existence.

Alongside his portraits, his landscapes follow the same logic: beauty and rawness moving in step, neither softening the other. His works balance between refined aesthetic and confronting reality, between what is seen and what is felt beneath the surface.

Cobbaut has exhibited widely across the region, including at the Belfort in Aalst, Kasteel Terlinden, Villa Ter Linden and various galleries. He has developed a longstanding artistic dialogue with glass artist Wouter Bolangier, resulting in several joint exhibitions in which Bolangier's mirror glass work reflects and refracts Cobbaut's painted gazes in a compelling visual symbiosis.

Recently he has expanded his practice into sculpture, with a first series of works now on view at the gallery.