Background in broad strokes

I grew up in a small town close to Frankfurt in Germany. My mother taught me the value of kindness and strength through acceptance. From my father I learned to follow one’s passion and appreciate music. My grandparents connected me to the worlds of arts and spirituality.

When I initially studied arts at the Kölner Werkschulen I followed classic realism. The first diploma I completed with paintings influenced by the Renaissance as well as by 16th and 17th century Dutch and German Masters.

At the same time I began to use these skills to make a living with Nature illustrations.

While working as an illustrator, realistic, representative paintings lost some of their appeal. I noticed that I was spending far more time at the East Asian Museum in Cologne than at the Wallraf Richartz Museum.

Together with my professor, I decided to focus on abstract expressionism for my Master exams while continuing to paint and work as an illustrator.

A new trend to use computer graphics threatened to dry up my source of income as an illustrator. This was not my creative path of choice so I freelance in the marketing and sales field.
Six years later I accepted an inspiring offer to join Ogilvy & Mather, one of the top global corporations specialising in communications. This was a completely new world for me that I greatly enjoyed exploring while maintaining a painting studio first in Cologne, then Frankfurt, and finally London. 

About 15 years on and after a career in management, I started my latest path training to become a business coach in 2004.

I discovered that my process of painting shares a number of properties fundamental to coaching.  While an artist facilitates and documents the process of what is created, it is the quality of the communication the painter has between the medium and unknown, unmanifested realms that creates the magic. For a coach this sort of magic appears when fresh insights arise as a result of the relationship between the coach and coachee. An entirely new entity is created in conversation between these two. The relationship itself. This third party works best when imagination and intuition are allowed to take part in the discovery process. A great coaching session is present when the typically over-used left side of the brain allows the right side into the dialogue. In my work this triad is represented by the painter, the canvas or paper and the space in-between. Some might describe this as the space of inspiration. My aim is to let the separation of the three parties fade into one and let the painting paint itself.