Ellen Von Wiegand

Ellen Von Wiegand completed her Master’s degree in Contemporary Art at Christie’s Education in 2011, and her BA in Art History from John Cabot University, Rome, in 2010. She developed an interest in printmaking while studying the linocuts of Picasso and Der Blaue Reiter at Christie’s, and is largely self-taught in this craft. She now works from her sunny studio in South London.

“Art is an essential part of who I am. I have known this for as long as I can remember. It is perhaps the only thing that I have ever known for sure. But to arrive at the point where I felt worthy of expressing myself I had to wait until it was unbearable not to do so.

You see, I am an introvert and I struggled to put myself out there for many years. My images reverberate with this search for self-assurance and serenity, and my own nude body features in every piece. I originally began using myself as a model because it gave me a lot of control over my compositions, and I didn’t have the means to pay someone else. However, using my body developed into something deeply personal. When we are nude we are at our most vulnerable, and I have come to see my work as a way to reconcile with the shy, insecure, and fearful pieces of myself. There is also something I love about showing myself naked when in fact I am severely uncomfortable being undressed in front of others. It is a means of being more open and allowing people into my world when in real life I struggle to do so. That said I don’t see my prints as self-portraits, but rather physical representations of emotional states of being. Female nudes engaging in quiet introspection dominate my work. This is reflective of the way I operate in my own life. I spend a lot of time working in solitude, developing my thoughts, and making peace with myself and the world by turning inward. But my hope is that male or female, you can see a piece of yourself in my work”.

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