Artists Exhibiting At Our London Art Fair

Bio:

I’m a British/German artist living in the south of Kent in the UK. I was born in the UK to German parents, this is something that has greatly influenced the whole of my life. In Germany I’m the English one and in the UK I’m the German … I can’t win!

Apparently I have always been drawing. My mum is inordinately proud of a sheet of paper that shows me copying shapes a doctor drew when I was three years old. Admittedly I can remember always drawing, painting or making something, I just loved it. Summers were spent at my Oma’s where I learned to embroider, cross-stitch, crochet and knit. My mum taught me to dress make and I picked up pattern cutting somewhere along the way. In fact I was one of those kids always trying out new things, any skill and I’d have a go at it.

At school I wasn’t allowed to study art at GCSE (cos my dad didn’t like the art teacher!) but I was allowed to take textiles and CDT (craft, design and technology) . If you’d known me back then you’d have sworn I would have ended up doing something with fabric. After my A-levels (where I was finally allowed to take art, mostly because textiles wasn’t an A-level subject) I spent a year doing an art foundation at Ravensbourne, followed by a degree in WMCP (wood, metal, ceramics and plastics) at the University of Brighton. I loved living in Brighton and wasn’t happy when I had to move home to London.



I started to work with my dad and he trained me to carve and make picture frames. I also worked other jobs and even did a years course in animation at the London College of Printmaking, followed by an unfinished Masters in Computer Animation at the London Guildhall University and a teaching qualification. I never finished these as my dad died quite suddenly from cancer and I took over his picture frame business.

The business took over, naturally, and my art took much of a back seat for many years. I still made bits where I could and played with making different frames, it never quite left me. The frames I made for the business were sold around the world and I have some great stories about them (if we ever meet feel free to ask me about it!). Over the years I’ve tried out various things from dog portrait sculpting to chainsaw carving, but nothing quite stuck.

More recently I’ve become a carer for my mum who has both Alzheimer’s and vascular Dementia, so things like the chainsaw carving have had to be rested for now. The lockdown in 2020 gave me a chance to reassess my life and I ventured towards more digital work and away from the frame making. At the beginning of 2021 I took a narrative in painting course and discovered this image in my head that just won’t go away … I never ever thought I’d be a painter, but I’m loving it!