Glass artist Wilfried Grootens was born in Uedem, a small town in the German countryside near the Dutch border.At the age of 15, Grootens first apprenticed as a glass painter at the Derix Company in Germany where he learned to restore antique stained glass windows.Four years later he left on a near decade-long adventure to travel the world, play music, and experience the cultures of Asia and South America before eventually returning to his work with glass.In 1988, he received a Master Craftsman’s Diploma in Munich and by the following year had opened his own studio in Kleve.By the 1980s, he had mastered the optical float technique where he paints, stacks, laminates and polishes layers of glass to create his sculptures.The cubes are cut and polished to perfection. His painted patterns seem to float within the cube, creating a magical display of optical illusionThousands of very fine brush strokes of varying tones on each layer recede or expand in size gradually and, when seen together, form a miraculous three dimensional globe which seems to be suspended in the cube.“With my glass painting I fill transparent, geometric spaces whose visual explorations produce surprising variations in forms,” Grootens explains. “Different perspectives on apparent spherical floating built-up forms of linear brush strokes reveal to the viewer new perspectives within the object‘s space.

More of Wilfred Grootens‘  amazing glass work can be found at https://wilfriedgrootens.de/en/wilfried-grootens-glas-artist/ and https://contempglass.org/artists/entry/wilfried-grootens.