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Portrait of the Artist as a young Woman

I grew up listening to the Beatles in the womb.At three years of age, I saw a videoclip of Jimi Hendrix playing Hey Joe and was mesmerized, I couldn't forget the sound of his guitar.

Fassbinder once smacked my mom's ass during a party, when she turned around, realizing it was him, she let him get away with it.She still brags about it today.

At six years of age I learned english by singing along with the Beatles records.At 7, my cousin Sofie and I danced along Stones' "Mothers little helper", over and over again.

My Swedish family is a family of carpenters and musicians and writers.My grandfather made up fairy tales.He started to write them down to send them to me as we lived in France, since he could not tell them to me at bedtime.He wrote a novel and published some stories in a magazine.My uncle put out a record as part of Trio Cromondo, they were a popular harmonica trio in Sweden.One of my cousins is an opera singer, the other one plays in a rock band, and Sofie, my cousin is a writer.My great grandmother would paint at nights she couldn't sleep, sensitive stormy seascapes.Her son painted too, I've seen a beautiful painting of birch-trees.

My German grandparents' wealth was part of the Wirtschaftswunder, industrious business people as they were, with help of some smuggling of industrial parts across the border in frenetic postwar amnesia.I loved it when we all built a chain and tossed the cardboard boxes to each other to load the truck.My grandmother was a woman hard as Kruppstahl, one of the women who built up the country after the war while the men were imprisoned or dead, a Truemmerfrau.I knew her as the woman who would get up before dawn and then go over to her factory, managing the whole thing, working along with her workers, doing the books in the office, walk over to the house to bring my grandfather breakfast in bed, who would then, perfectly groomed and semi-majestic, with the concealed limp he got from the war, walk over to the factory and overlook the proceedings.He would occasionally walk over to one of the machines trying out his latest ( very ugly ) model, as he was the engineer, never addressing the speech to any of his workers, albeit sometimes, he did.She was always on her feet and she let me play in the factory and build along, they built chrome lamps.Every evening she would do her nails in front of the TV, we would make it "gemuetlich" watching a krimi, like "Derrick" or "Tatort", with the hair up in curlers under towels and doing our nails eating chocolate cookies.She was quite a character, very sociable, always exaggerating her stories from 2 to 17, with a loud voice without need for amplifiers.They had a real Degas and other paintings, mostly landscapes.

In war torn Lorraine, where I went to elementary school, the hill was a huge grave of soldiers, full of old concrete shelters, trenches, bomb craters, we kids would play in it, sometimes some of us could still find landmines and handgranates.At my french school, I was considered an enemy, a German kid, it was the late seventies.During history lessons, the class would howl and cheer when the French put the Prussians to flight by singing the Marseillaise.I stuck out my tongue to them and sang the Marseillaise ardently.We used to have these printed tableaux of historical events, paintings that described the scenery while master, ( Mr. Deutsch, the weird bachelor with the green shaded glasses and the reputation that made you fear to move up to his class in first grade already ), talked about history, about bloody wars and blodthirsty kings, who put their opponents in damp dungeons and let them rot there.My hero was Jeanne d'Arc, a true warrior, who later got framed by her own king and turned into a pigeon and a saint.

Ah, and the Revolution ! Finally the evil kings were thrown over.Mr.Daniel Deutsch, ( a kid had sprayed "fils de pute" under his name in the tunnel that led to school ), had a penchant for drawing, he would ask Jean (Jean Jean Jean, la bouteille au cu, quand elle petera tu sera perdu) "what do you want to be when you grow up ?" Jean stood up straight and said : "Dessinateur, monsieur." I soon surpassed him in talent and technique, but never got singled out, since I was both a girl and German, I got good grades though.

We had to illustrate all the songs we learned along with the poems of Victor Hugo, Paul Verlaine, Les Fables de La Fontaine etc.We copied the little frogs and human body parts in Biology.We were copying the map of France, its coastlines and rivers in Geography, I became very exact at that.And we had art, where we used Gouache.Martine and I became best friends.She was a popular girl and I finally became french.Even my hair turned dark.Truffaut's : Les 400 coups, the 400 blows, is one of my favorite movies.

Then we moved.In Germany they didn't like us because we were French.At 13 I became blissfully aware of the Who and couldn't let go of them since.

Walking along the street, trucks came by with young french soldiers from the occupational forces.A whole truck load full of whistling and shouting boys.The attention was both embarassing and flattering at the same time.

In my room I worked on a drawing for months, correcting it over and over, losing myself completely in it.It was clear to me that I would be an artist even if it meant that I had to sleep under bridges in Paris ( I liked Paris, although we used to stay in 4 star hotels ).

I practiced evrey day and would do drawings for friends from a passport photo for a beer.I was a typical teenage rebel, provocatively dressed I would hitchhike and hang out with the wrong crowd.I found myself at 17 in Sweden, with my family.

We moved there - at my 18th birthday everybody in my family gave me painting utensils.I painted surrealistic figures in front of twilight backgrounds and gave them away .I started to prepare to get in to an art school.I met friends who were a generation older, who were artists and had gone to Art Academy in Stockholm, the Nielsen Family, they were two sisters and their mom, they took me seriously, without them I would not be an artist today.I got in to an art school in Gothenburg.My father yelled at me :"you will never make it", I ran crying to my artist friends and they said :"don't worry, things usually work out..."

In Gothenburg I learned classical painting.My crazy friend Anders Norrman taught me other things about art.He includes drawing, writing and pop culture.I tattooed a palette with a paintbrush on my arm.

I moved back to Germany, before entering the Art Academy I stayed at an anarchist squat.We sang the Internationale in harmonies.I tried to find my place there, when I showed the activists a portrait of my boyfriend I had painted, a sinister anti-hero who fell into the fire when he was 15, they asked :"Is that Che Guevara ?" I had to move on.

I am Joseph Beuys' artistic granddaughter.

First I didn't know if I could study, when I finally got funding, I went to the motorway with my friend Bernd with a sign "To the South" We got all the way to Europes' South west tip in Portugal.And I finally got to sleep under a bridge on the Riverbanks of the Loire which gave me a bronchitis for the rest of the trip.Of course I had my sketchbook and my crayons in my army back pack and made really beautiful pastel pictures.

In Strasbourg I started to work with Sulfur and I was drawing fast in the wet mass.I worked with Sulfur for years until I got allergic, it was over.

The fast and precise drawing technique I kept, I travelled and linked my own internationality together with people in the artworld.

I lived in an artist squat in France, a vibrant and interesting place with talented people at the intersection of music, film, dance and visual arts, they introduced me to Boris Vian, Stockhausen, Pasolini and themselves.

I arrived in San Francisco in 2002, with my then husband and my little son.San Francisco still tainted in psychedelia, like a colorful homeless sleeping beauty, exotic, its true natives only present in spirit, the beat of the poets in a distant hum drum.

My work has always included text in some way or the other, as a narrative or as fragmented thoughts, in scriptoral gestures, flowing into the line in a drawing or in plain texts.I am an artist and drawing has become second nature to me, I also work as an educator, a translator and a writer.

I grew up listening to the Beatles in the womb.At three years of age, I saw a videoclip of Jimi Hendrix playing Hey Joe and was mesmerized, I couldn't forget the sound of his guitar. Fassbinder once smacked my mom's ass during a party, when she turned around, realizing it was him, she let him get away with it.She still brags about it today. At six years of age I learned english by singing along with the Beatles records.At 7, my cousin Sofie and I danced along Stones' "Mothers little helper", over and over again. My Swedish family is a family of carpenters and musicians and writers.My grandfather made up fairy tales.He started to write them down to send them to me as we lived in France, since he could not tell them to me at bedtime.He wrote a novel and published some stories in a magazine.My uncle put out a record as part of Trio Cromondo, they were a popular harmonica trio in Sweden.One of my cousins is an opera singer, the other one plays in a rock band, and Sofie, my cousin is a writer.My great grandmother would paint at nights she couldn't sleep, sensitive stormy seascapes.Her son painted too, I've seen a beautiful painting of birch-trees. My German grandparents' wealth was part of the Wirtschaftswunder, industrious business people as they were, with help of some smuggling of industrial parts across the border in frenetic postwar amnesia.I loved it when we all built a chain and tossed the cardboard boxes to each other to load the truck.My grandmother was a woman hard as Kruppstahl, one of the women who built up the country after the war while the men were imprisoned or dead, a Truemmerfrau.I knew her as the woman who would get up before dawn and then go over to her factory, managing the whole thing, working along with her workers, doing the books in the office, walk over to the house to bring my grandfather breakfast in bed, who would then, perfectly groomed and semi-majestic, with the concealed limp he got from the war, walk over to the factory and overlook the proceedings.He would occasionally walk over to one of the machines trying out his latest ( very ugly ) model, as he was the engineer, never addressing the speech to any of his workers, albeit sometimes, he did.She was always on her feet and she let me play in the factory and build along, they built chrome lamps.Every evening she would do her nails in front of the TV, we would make it "gemuetlich" watching a krimi, like "Derrick" or "Tatort", with the hair up in curlers under towels and doing our nails eating chocolate cookies.She was quite a character, very sociable, always exaggerating her stories from 2 to 17, with a loud voice without need for amplifiers.They had a real Degas and other paintings, mostly landscapes. In war torn Lorraine, where I went to elementary school, the hill was a huge grave of soldiers, full of old concrete shelters, trenches, bomb craters, we kids would play in it, sometimes some of us could still find landmines and handgranates.At my french school, I was considered an enemy, a German kid, it was the late seventies.During history lessons, the class would howl and cheer when the French put the Prussians to flight by singing the Marseillaise.I stuck out my tongue to them and sang the Marseillaise ardently.We used to have these printed tableaux of historical events, paintings that described the scenery while master, ( Mr. Deutsch, the weird bachelor with the green shaded glasses and the reputation that made you fear to move up to his class in first grade already ), talked about history, about bloody wars and blodthirsty kings, who put their opponents in damp dungeons and let them rot there.My hero was Jeanne d'Arc, a true warrior, who later got framed by her own king and turned into a pigeon and a saint. Ah, and the Revolution ! Finally the evil kings were thrown over.Mr.Daniel Deutsch, ( a kid had sprayed "fils de pute" under his name in the tunnel that led to school ), had a penchant for drawing, he would ask Jean (Jean Jean Jean, la bouteille au cu, quand elle petera tu sera perdu) "what do you want to be when you grow up ?" Jean stood up straight and said : "Dessinateur, monsieur." I soon surpassed him in talent and technique, but never got singled out, since I was both a girl and German, I got good grades though. We had to illustrate all the songs we learned along with the poems of Victor Hugo, Paul Verlaine, Les Fables de La Fontaine etc.We copied the little frogs and human body parts in Biology.We were copying the map of France, its coastlines and rivers in Geography, I became very exact at that.And we had art, where we used Gouache.Martine and I became best friends.She was a popular girl and I finally became french.Even my hair turned dark.Truffaut's : Les 400 coups, the 400 blows, is one of my favorite movies.
Then we moved.In Germany they didn't like us because we were French.At 13 I became blissfully aware of the Who and couldn't let go of them since. Walking along the street, trucks came by with young french soldiers from the occupational forces.A whole truck load full of whistling and shouting boys.The attention was both embarassing and flattering at the same time. In my room I worked on a drawing for months, correcting it over and over, losing myself completely in it.It was clear to me that I would be an artist even if it meant that I had to sleep under bridges in Paris ( I liked Paris, although we used to stay in 4 star hotels ). I practiced evrey day and would do drawings for friends from a passport photo for a beer.I was a typical teenage rebel, provocatively dressed I would hitchhike and hang out with the wrong crowd.I found myself at 17 in Sweden, with my family. We moved there - at my 18th birthday everybody in my family gave me painting utensils.I painted surrealistic figures in front of twilight backgrounds and gave them away .I started to prepare to get in to an art school.I met friends who were a generation older, who were artists and had gone to Art Academy in Stockholm, the Nielsen Family, they were two sisters and their mom, they took me seriously, without them I would not be an artist today.I got in to an art school in Gothenburg.My father yelled at me :"you will never make it", I ran crying to my artist friends and they said :"don't worry, things usually work out..." In Gothenburg I learned classical painting.My crazy friend Anders Norrman taught me other things about art.He includes drawing, writing and pop culture.I tattooed a palette with a paintbrush on my arm. I moved back to Germany, before entering the Art Academy I stayed at an anarchist squat.We sang the Internationale in harmonies.I tried to find my place there, when I showed the activists a portrait of my boyfriend I had painted, a sinister anti-hero who fell into the fire when he was 15, they asked :"Is that Che Guevara ?" I had to move on. I am Joseph Beuys' artistic granddaughter. First I didn't know if I could study, when I finally got funding, I went to the motorway with my friend Bernd with a sign "To the South" We got all the way to Europes' South west tip in Portugal.And I finally got to sleep under a bridge on the Riverbanks of the Loire which gave me a bronchitis for the rest of the trip.Of course I had my sketchbook and my crayons in my army back pack and made really beautiful pastel pictures.
In Strasbourg I started to work with Sulfur and I was drawing fast in the wet mass.I worked with Sulfur for years until I got allergic, it was over.
The fast and precise drawing technique I kept, I travelled and linked my own internationality together with people in the artworld.
I lived in an artist squat in France, a vibrant and interesting place with talented people at the intersection of music, film, dance and visual arts, they introduced me to Boris Vian, Stockhausen, Pasolini and themselves. I arrived in San Francisco in 2002, with my then husband and my little son.San Francisco still tainted in psychedelia, like a colorful homeless sleeping beauty, exotic, its true natives only present in spirit, the beat of the poets in a distant hum drum. My work has always included text in some way or the other, as a narrative or as fragmented thoughts, in scriptoral gestures, flowing into the line in a drawing or in plain texts.I am an artist and drawing has become second nature to me, I also work as an educator, a translator and a writer.