Sophie von Hellermann was born in Munich, Germany in 1975 and now lives in London and Margate, UK.
The content of Hellermann's artworks is often closely linked to social reality, classical mythology and fables. Different literary works and historical events inspire her imagination. This connection leads to complex narrative structures behind her romantic and soft paintings. She describes Australia's fire with a mother and child fleeing the flames of hell (Because it is,2019) and Britain's exit from the European Union with a young girl breaking free of her European flag dress (Britain Tries to Divest Itself of the Mantle of the European Union,2019). With her imaginative and impactful brushstrokes, she has even painted the story of one of China's four great classic novels, Dream of the Red Chamber (Rebirth of the stone,2021).
Hellermann is not, however, an artist who focuses exclusively on the real world. On the contrary, Hellermann believes that imagination takes precedence over reality, and her reflections on the real world are always expressed through dreams and imagination. She once said: "what interests me is how the mind works and how dream images come together from things you’ve seen, read, and experienced both years ago and yesterday." Hellermann likes to dilute and mix pigments continuously to create unique colours with watercolour effects. These diluted colours are brilliantly light, but the water in the pigments evaporates quickly. To surpass the speed of evaporation and to ensure that the fleeting images in her mind would appear on the canvas, Hellermann would employ a thick brush to quickly apply the diluted pigments to the original canvas. This sense of rapid painting is greatly enjoyed by Hellermann, and this technique allows her artwork to be like images in the mind: light and fluid, full of weightlessness, fleeting like a dream. Through her artwork, we can explore the space of the unconscious, see the shapes of dreams and feel their birth.