Hello Dear Vanessa Wenwieser. Thank you for giving us the chance to Interview with you. Our first question is how the “Covid-19” affects your art?

It actually affected me in such a way that I couldn’t so much do printmaking anymore and I went more in the direction of still drawing etc. but using digital techniques more as I could do them from home. So in a way I had more time to work on them but I would like to get back to more printmaking in the future again as I love how my works fo from the hand-made to digital and back. Trying to use the mediums that best suit to what I try to achieve. Each medium has it’s strengths and weaknesses. In digital and photography I love the immediacy, also of trying things out like how a change of colour would look etc. and in drawing and painting the time and effort it takes and how it teaches you to see and in printing making it’s in between the too, still very tactile but that closeups to photography of the mechanical reproduction.



Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what drove you to choose art as a career?

Well I’ve always enjoyed art and loved art class and painting, drawing etc. in school, then  I felt I need to do something even if it’s part time where I can pour out my emotions and thoughts and so started studying Fine Art at the Glasgow School of Art, I enjoyed this very much my black and white works greatly became influenced by Duane Michals who used photography to explain what is going on inside hime instead of being only interesting for it’s visual beauty or capturing the moment like Henri Cartier Bresson.
I loved the immediacy of photography and it’s strong relatability with people, it always was of something that actually was in front of the lens, there was a connect ability that I enjoyed. Also printing in the black and white darkrooms well as color darkrooms was, and still is so magical to me. To use potions to make images slowly to appear out of nowhere, is so amazing. The atmosphere so quiet and surreal, so dreamy I enjoyed it so much.


How do you make sure you have time to create? Do you have a set time or build it into your calendar? 

To make sure I am able to have time to create I  make sure I get enough done in a week and sometimes stay up longer to finish work or whenever I have some free time. Art is a priority for me. Also whenever I have ideas I write them down and draw them so when I have time I can work one them, I get many ideas for works in my dreams or in a half waking frame of mind or even when I’m doing things that are very trance like that’s when they seem to slip through my subconscious.


What is the hardest part of creating a painting?

The hardest part of creating an artwork I think is actually having an idea, it is also the most important part. There is always a fear that one day I might run out of ideas, then depending on the idea is to find a model that depicts this idea well and working on all the small details to create an an image that expresses your feelings, the right mood and light etc. to create an atmosphere.


We saw your main theme is Women. Sometimes they have lots of flowers, some of them have a couple of dark corners like a snakes, skulls.. Can you give us an informations about your artworks background story?

Yes I enjoy using women to help understand what is going on inside of me to make my emotions visible and I feel of course more that it relates to other women. Flowers are symbols of fertility and the new if only fleeting so in a way that is a dark theme too, they are often used in Momento Mori to help understand the fleetingness of beauty and life. In Momento Mori you also find skulls and snakes and so on as well as in religious imagery which influences me a lot. I like to show off these women as proud and strong beings that are vulnerable but overcome this by their inner strength. One image where I show this is where I make flowers our of wings that come our of the woman’s scars on her back symbolizing the pain she goes through but how in her own inner strength she overcomes it little by little, one step at a time. Strength is not only physical but mental and women have an enormous amount of inner strength and willpower.


We are seeing lots of “Red” colors in your Artworks. Why is the colour “red” is important in your artworks?

Red is for me a very important color in my art as it symbolisms so much in which I believe, it is the color of extremes and my images often depict emotional turmoil for example I used a lot of red in my image of a young girl that had been bitten by a vampire and it symbolises not only s state of extreme danger but also of ecstasy a trance like state in which she found herself in. But I don’t only use the color red to symbolize danger or dark themes but also for love but always emotionally heightened states of being, for which I think the color is perfect.


What is your creative process like and how has your style changed over the years?


I suppose the writing down the idea and drawing it has always remained the same.
Well I started off working more in photography, which I often still use in my art and pursuing printmaking for example  screen-printing, which is very close to photography anyway. As well as adding some painted details. I used to make much more changes during the printmaking process and using paint and now use more digital techniques but I always make sure that the images look like paintings by using texture, I’m not a fan at all of images which look to clean or perfected. I am of the Japanese Wabi Sabi opinion that great art or craft is made better through small flaws. Like Leonard Cohen said: ‘There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light get’s in’ 
People can relate far better to images that are imperfect, as we all are.


Anything else you'd like to mention that I didn't ask?

Yes I was very much influenced by dark stories in my childhood like the Grimms fairy tales and stories of Vampires, Ghosts and Witches which I cherished, I suppose the dark fears we all have and how to overcome them and do things although they scare you is a very important lesson to learn and I’m still working on it.


Thank you for your time!

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