Artist Isabella Schels teaches flowers to walk

Dhe artist Isabella Schels, who was born in Lower Bavaria, has a background in film and television. She still shoots reports for Bayerischer Rundfunk today, and she won the Grimme Online Award in 2014 with an internet project.

With such a history, of course, the probability increases to have an eye for the visual power of the everyday world. Schels has been painting since she could hold a pen, but it became more professional three years ago when she illustrated her children’s book “Crazy Like Mary” herself.

In 2019, she roamed New York and saw through a window how a woman, who was apparently expecting an evening party, arranged huge flowers. The idea for her flower sculptures, which she snatches from transience in photographs and sells as prints, was not born on a flower meadow in Lower Bavaria, but in the metropolis that, apart from its nickname “Big Apple”, evokes few organic associations.

The flowers are reminiscent of surrealists and pop art

There is no art in recognizing human traits in a dog or bunny, but it is different in a dandelion or a gerbera. Schels, once an editor for the ARD series “Rote Rosen”, succeeds in a playful way that evokes memories of the surrealists, of pop art, of Jeff Koons and – not far from him – of Ken and Barbie.

Great artist Markus Lüpertz liked the gems so much that he accepted Schels into a class at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kolbermoor. Meanwhile, she is already working on her next project: bosom flowers. With this close-to-the-body variation of traditional Alpine costumes in the tradition of “Liberalitas Bavariae”, Schels consistently continues on the path from children’s book illustrator to adult artist.