Mercedes Helnwein Painter Austria 1979

Mercedes Helnwein was born in Vienna, Austria (1979), daughter to Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein. 
She moved to Ireland with her family in her teens. Helnwein is self taught. With no interest in attending art schools, she instead drew her inspiration from personal influences ranging from Southern Gothic traditions to the cartoons of Robert Crumb, nineteenth Century literature, American motel culture and the Delta blues, amongst others.
In 2000, Helnwein moved to Los Angeles and began to exhibit her drawings publicly.  Her early art shows were self-instigated, one-night events often with one or two other inexperienced artists. Between 2008 and 2013 Helnwein exhibited regularly at the Merry Karnowsky Gallery, Los Angeles.
With her series Asleep in the Wind (2011) Helnwein broke from the primarily pencil-focused style of her early work and moved onto large-scale formats, eventually adopting oil pastel as her dominant medium. Her work has spanned various themes over the years, but it is united in its exploration of the normalcy of every-day life through a filter of dubiety. Helnwein has said: “I love mundane moments because I don’t believe that anything is ever normal. When I play with a scene, the idea is to let myself see the undercurrents of the rat’s nest that’s propping up the familiar. ” Although men have played a crucial part in many of her works, the emphasis is always heavy on the female aspect of the story. Populated by prom queens, bridesmaids, witches, nurses and girl gangs Helnwein gives her female protagonists the freedom to be both the heroine and the antiheroine, often letting the lines blur inexorably.
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Music: Remembering Her Face - Silent Partner
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