Vita
Growing up in the years after the war, I learnt at an early age to observe my surroundings, to
accept deprivation and to make the world around me more joyful by using my imagination, by
making things and especially by drawing. Whenever I wrote a list of things I wanted for
Christmas or my birthday I asked for “crayons”. I was allowed - and that was certainly unusual
for the time - to visit exhibitions of Dürer, Chagall, Marc, Nolde, German and French painting, at
a very early age. I literally crawled into some paintings. I spent hours studying how the Old
Masters painted drops of water, for instance.
Through painting I have come to see things in a loving way and have learnt to use my
imagination to make up stories behind what is visible; to combine poetry, passion and the
fantastic with what is real.
In 1978 I had a great stroke of luck when I took my first oil painting to a picture framer and,
above all, renowned owner of a gallery. It was he who discovered and then supported me. He
found the expression “poetical realism” for my art. During the course of the last 35 years my
painting has developed more and more in the direction of photorealism or “Trompe l’oeil”
(optical illusion). If the beholder thinks he can peel the old paint from the door with his
fingernail or if he tries to open it, then I am pleased.
During the last few years I have been especially keen on painting the surfaces of
stones, old wood, glass, fruit etc. in such a way that you think you can feel them.
But - perhaps as a mother of two children who are now long grown-up and as a trained nursery-
school teacher - I often have almost childlike, playful motifs on my easel, too. The fact that I
especially like painting scenes showing people in creative carnival costumes can definitely be put
down to the thirty years I spent in Cologne.
I have been running a small painting school for a few years and am happy to pass on whatever I
can.
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