Exclusive Interview
1. Tell me a bit about you and your background: where are you from/ where did you study? I was born and raised in a small town in northern Bavaria, Germany, where I spent most of my childhood outside in the woods or inside making up play scenes in the small bedroom I shared with my older sister, and with reading and drawing. Art schools were far away and never an option for me as a teenager living with my divorced mother. So, after I finished school, I completed a work/ study apprenticeship at a china manufacturing company near my hometown to become a ceramic painter. During the three years of study, I learned how to paint and decorate various china pieces including figurines, plates, and vases. In the accompanying art classes, we were introduced to oil, watercolor, ink pen work, and other media. Since art and literature go hand-in-hand for me, I eventually also finished a university degree in German and English literature. You will find that all my artwork has a “literary” element in it, often inspired by poems or fairy tales, always telling some sort of story, some known, some my own, some old, some new. 2. Do you personally find the process of working within selfimposed constraints or rules helpful to your work? Once I was approached by a client to create a picture for an event. They told me all the things they wanted in the picture, down to the facial expressions of the people in the picture. I totally froze up and couldn’t even come up with a sketch. That made me realize that I work best with as little constraints and rules as possible whether they are client- or self-imposed. 3. How did you find your style? Has it changed since you started? Finding my style was a long and involved process that is still ongoing. For me the term “style” is fluid and always changing. I need variety and constantly make little changes to the way I draw or do collage work. I love introducing new elements like my handcarved rubber stamps I started using a little while ago. I started out doing black and white ink pen drawings, began playing with color and paper collage work. Recently, I’ve been doing more and more monochrome work using one favorite color for an entire picture. I also study the work of artists whom I admire, not to copy their work but to learn from it. I want my style to be recognizably my own allowing it to develop and change at the same time.
Judith Clay is a German artist and trained ceramic painter. She holds a degree in comparative literature. She works primarily in ink, pastels, colored pencils, and collages. Her drawings are echoes of her feelings and dreams. With her pictures, she tries to reawaken the magic, emotions, and freedoms of childhood.
4. can you remember some of your earliest influences? With every book I had as a child, I remember always intensely studying its pictures whether they were photos, paintings or drawings, the first one being a collection of Brothers’ Grimm fairy
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