For me as an artist, art is a tool of perception and a way of exploring and capturing the world; an appropriation of philosophical thinking and a means of connection to myself and my environment. It’s my way of living.
Over the recent years, my work has been presented in museum exhibitions, performance festivals and galleries in Austria, Italy, Japan, China, Ghana, Germany and Spain. I was educated in art and art pedagogy at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. With over 20 years of artistic practice and engagement in my personal growth and spiritual path, my passion lies in a combined approach from various fields which I use as a rich toolbox to support people in connecting to themselves and setting free their creative potential.
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I grew up in Austria in the country side next to a hospital. I remember that I would have this unbound artistic curiosity in my childhood about my environment and that I would use artistic tools to explore the world. I was in awe of the wonders and aesthetics of nature and my surroundings. I would experiment with various things like mixing sand in water and watching what happens when you swirl it really fast and how it settles down. I also searched for natural colours to paint in nature like decayed wood. I was always drawing or building something, but it was so natural for me that I wasn’t very self-aware about this artistic side of mine.
After high school – an art school – I wanted to apply for Art studies but I also had this huge resistance because of the pseudo-artists in school. It made me actually refuse to want to be an artist if it meant having that big of a slimy ego. Also, I didn’t want to monetise my art – it was so sacred to me and I feared spoiling the art or deforming it to please the market, the people, or the recipients. So I started to study something else instead: the science of theater film and media. During this time I experienced an existential crisis and I struggled with it for most of my 20s. Art and meditation brought me through this time. It took actually until my early 30s to really embrace my artistic self.
Nevertheless, I decided to try the examen for art university. I wanted to do something meaningful, but was still struggling with resistance about being an artist so I applied for the pedagogy branch. I thought that teaching art can change the world and so I got approved for art school in my mid-20s.
Because I was interested in literally everything I did a lot of courses and spent some time in more or less every workshop of the arts school. I learned a lot of different techniques and developed many projects in this time. From design to woodworking to video and inter-media to painting, performance and architecture – you name it, I tried it. I explored the conceptualized approach to art and the intuitive, looked at creating from so many different angles and used my time in university as a playground. Also I wielded the arts to reflect, to think about life and to question life and humanness. It was a very philosophical time and a time of growing self-awareness; art was the preferred tool to explore and the means to express. I also integrated techniques of mindfulness and meditation in my work, which I practiced since my late teenage years.
Next to my studies I worked for more than 5 years part-time as a study assistant for my architecture professor Mag. Anton Falkeis. He really included me in teaching workshops for students about space and art. I also supported people to develop their projects with private sessions next to taking care of the organization and technical setups for presentations etc.
In the last few years of my studies I focused more on my artistic career than on my studies. I embraced being an artist and worked on my body of work. I developed my self-awareness as an artist and took part in a few exhibitions and festivals. I made my first homepage and kind of stepped out into the world for the first time. That was quite the process for me to be honest.
Whilst the corona pandemic started and Europe was closing its borders I was stuck in Vienna and I finally started to paint in bigger formats. I painted huge paintings for months (feeling blues) and also created performative video works. Even though I was in such a difficult time, feeling wise, I created so much art – or maybe because of this, who knows. Art is a place of comfort and a way of living for me.
In 2021 I was invited to become part of Dima Mystery School in Mallorca and I went on another inner journey ─ this time with a bunch of friends – where I discovered that most of the topics we worked with I already encountered in my artistic practice. I realized how deep of a self-growth tool creativity and the arts can be.
That’s why I decided to bring exactly this coinciding matter into the world and research and teach the parts of arts that bring us closer to who we really are and let us enter in the selflessness of the tao. I feel this is my calling and my offering to the world.
