Maggie Daems was born in northern Belgium in 1937 and today lives in Meyrin, Switzerland. At the age of nine, after the death of her father, she took refuge in drawing, using her school notebooks for the purpose. Eventually she got married and had a family.

 

Daems did not return to drawing until the late 1970’s following a serious operation, when she started to explore a variety of techniques and materials including water colors, India ink and color pencils. She now began to give form to a universe of dancing characters which continue to populate her pages of paper. Her encounter with the artist Rosemarie Koczÿ reinforced her need to create in order to find shelter from the blows she felt life had inflicted on her. Through her work, Maggie Daems, who prefers not to use her real name, Maria Magdalena, reveals her life experience, her emotions and her fragility. The dancing creatures with a likeness of flower petals which Daems regularly creates on paper are drawn fastidiously and appear weightless, fragile and fleeting as if moved by drafts of air.