It was an invitation, it becomes love at the first sight !

Un "fine painter" a friend told me.
A "great painter"... I would add.

Wides does not shy away from distress, nor does he pull his punches.
He feels that merciful worth we bestow on the human being.
He flings his perceptions right in your face, he lights them up in flames, he does not prettify the sordid. 

Wides can embrace you only with life's reality.

Honest and humble, always harsh in his awareness, displaying an infinite and seamy blend of beauty and misery, and the latter's rebellion ... Wides feels, vibrates, doesn't give a damn and, while suppressing his sobs, he says it, paints it, shouts it out, laments it, yet makes it sublime.

With a deeply lined style, questioning and anguished, both rural and urban, he shouts out our fears at all and sundry. A kind of exorcism.

Too modest to hope for a smile or a kind word, he persists, the rascal, to love his human mire !

You speak of Permeke when you think of Wides ? That would be disrespectful to both of them:    
one has departed, the other is still among us ... pursuing a pictorial future where there is no room for doubt. 

Bernadette Habay
02/14/1995