Sgt.Pepper sends the world into a psychedelic whirl; Batman crashes on technicolour TV with a ZAM! CRACK! POW! While Andy Warhol paints his self-portrait, mum Lisette brings Frank into the world.

The support, faith, and love of that same mum will be a constant in both his life and career, during her life and after her death.

Of all the gratitude Frank has towards so many people, it is still to his mother that this book is dedicated.

For more than 30 years, Frank De Decker's striking artworks and portraits have been brightening up homes, designer agencies, fashion boutiques, à la mode restaurants, and the occasional luxury pissoir, in more than 50 countries around the world.

Frank can be described as an artistic jack-of-all-trades. The evolution of his work resembles a dynamic rollercoaster of styles, materials, subjects, and stories. And as a rollercoaster should be, it is exciting, and surprising, makes you laugh and scream, and alternates slowness and contemplation with adrenaline and excitement. As roller coasters should also be, they pass the most rigorous tests of professionalism and engineering. However, there are recurring themes in his work and his character and passion are ever-present. Kindness and accessibility are never far away.

When he gets mad at the world and sets fire to an Eifel Tower made out of matchboxes, with flames licking the ceiling of his Atelier, you can't resist a smile and you don't need a Master in Arts to understand his emotions. Frank is a people person and he treats his portraits as he would treat a friend, generously. His commissioned works are very popular as they bring joy and tell a story, and his celebrity portraits are done in such a way that they connect the client/admirer with his or her idol. An artist with both feet in everyday life, he has built a solid reputation among the wider Belgian public as the celebrity portraitist, regularly appearing in the media with his work and meetings with celebrities or his commissions for the team of his heart: FC Brugge.

A work by or a collaboration with Frank De Decker will be authentic. His pop-art is such an example, fa-mous popular characters and subjects take on a new meaning and personality: cheeky, involved, con-scious, funny, crazy, personalised. For Frank, the mainstream is not a slow-flowing stream, it is an adven-ture with humour and soul.

Throughout this book, Frank selected 40 works, mainly portraits, that provide a view of his career. Ac-companied by short texts, anecdotes and concoctions, the reader, the visitor in this paper gallery, gets to see a unique retrospective.