Mercedes Helnwein

Posted by Fabio 19 April 2011

Artist, novelist, filmmaker – Vienna born Mercedes Helnwein daughter of Austro-Irish renowned painter, and art provocateur Gottfried Helnwein – art is in her blood as well as on her mind. Prior to embracing drawing and filmmaking Mercedes Helnwein was working as a writer of fiction in the realm of short stories.

File: Tell us about your upbringing being the daughter of world famous artist Gottfried Helnwein.
Mercedes Helnwein: It was great. We grew up with a lot of freedom and got exposed to art from many different angles – art openings, Museums, concerts, backstage at theatre productions, meeting other artists, being around at the printing houses and magazine offices with my dad. Our parents took us everywhere, and we gathered a lot of inspiration along the way. And later, when we all started growing into our own interests we got a lot of support from them. Whether it was music, like my brother Ali, photography like Cyril – or even a college education like my youngest brother Amadeus, who just graduated from Cork University where he studied history and literature. There were never any pressures from them to go in a certain direction. Nothing felt re- strained or claustrophobic, and in turn we never had to “rebel” in our teenage years or go against our parents, because they already were our friends. They were never embarrassing to us. They are people we still look up to and go to for advice.

You were born in Vienna but then moved to Ire- land, and in 2000 you set up your studio in down- town Los Angeles. Does your surroundings influence the way you work?
I think surroundings always have an influence on ones work. Even if the surroundings don’t immediately affect my style or themes, they certainly affect the way that I live or work. LA is a world of its own. There are so many things that repulse me about this town, and yet it’s the place I can get the most work done – and it’s also one of my favorite places to exist. Maybe because I’ve worked here so long, I’ve learned to have sentimental feelings about this place. Ireland of course is about as different as it gets from LA. We live out in the countryside
and all the insanity of LA drops away the minute you step onto the ground there. It’s quiet, beautiful, green and the air is the best perfume
you could wish for. Somehow this is the place that is home.

After arriving to Los Angeles and having completed your first novel, you took a break from writing and picked up drawing – what made you shift?
I was drawing and having art shows the entire time that I was working on my novel actually. I never stop drawing – no matter what. But finishing a novel felt like giving birth to a mountain. I naturally just wanted to take a break afterwards from those characters that I’d lived with so long. It’s hard to switch immediately to different characters and crank out something else. I’d written about Hester Day for so long that I was still in her world. I wasn’t really ready to write about someone else. That being said, I’m always writing something – whether a short story or an essay or random thoughts. And there will be another novel when the time is right. I love writing too much to not do it. Sometimes I think I’m more a writer than I am anything else. Even my visual work feels like the work of a writer to me every once in a while.
And also, a lot of my work is inspired by words or fractions of old songs or literature or phrases or random things people said. I’m a sucker for a good sentence – if someone can put together a string of words in a fascinating way, I melt. It’s one of the talents I have the most respect for.

To read the rest of this interview plus Mercedes unpublished short story ‘Glitter and Doom’, please purchase the issue here.