My fascination with colours and paintings goes back to my childhood, although during and after the war I didn’t have many opportunities to paint. At the end of the war, our house was completely in ruins, and so my mum and I moved in with friends, where we stayed in a small room in their attic. It wasn’t much better at school, with 70 kids to one classroom, although we were taught by a very dedicated teacher. However, we didn’t have any opportunities for such “leisure” activities.

Later, my spare time was shaped by a handful of books and music. I really loved singing at primary school, in the church choir and, later, at the convent school. Growing up in a tumultuous family situation created by post-war conditions, I spent most of my spare time playing the piano.

At the age of 18, I started working in Salzburg. Two years later, I got married here, and quiet years followed with my husband and children Rolf and Susanne, for whom I had given up my profession. Like many mothers of that time, I began attending pottery courses through the VHS and found friends who were amateur painters. In the Salzburg Museum, then still the Carolinum-Auguseum, there was a weekly lecture by Dr. Albin Rohrmoser, in which he guided us from the beginnings of painting to modern times. We got to know many important works through travels to Italy, France, Spain, and Switzerland.

After my husband had passed away at an early stage, my entire life began to centre around my children. One day, I shared with my daughter Susanne that when I was a child, I had desperately wished for a 24-colour paint set, but I had never voiced this desire to anyone. At my next birthday, she gave me a lovely surprise and presented me with a box of 24 colours. Soon after, she arrived with an easel and some paints from a friend who had moved abroad for a few years. I took this as a challenge to take action.

Despite my fascination with painting, I would never have thought to pick up a brush by myself. It was a fortunate coincidence that I enrolled in an adult evening class and met a wonderful teacher, Herr Schmegener, who very gently helped me to develop my skills. In later years, I took various painting classes with Frau Sabine Schreckeneder, who encouraged her students to work freely and explore their creativity with gouache. I soon discovered that I needed to work independently. It was also important for me to develop my own authentic style in my artwork. I wanted to capture people in diverse situations, their gestures and feelings, and make them visible on the canvas. 

Over the 30 years or so that I have been painting, I found that not only did my artistic skills evolve, but so did my personality and the manner in which I wanted to paint the people around me. Today, I take great delight in depicting a variety of different faces. One of the challenges I face is working with large formats that tell a wide range of sometimes very different personal stories.