Anna
Vogel

I started painting seriously in my early twenties. When I look back, I was working from a tiny room in my first Berlin flat, with finished canvases stacked against walls, under tables and anywhere else they would fit. The closer I got to finding my own style, the more paintings seemed to fill the place.

I was never particularly good at letting things go, but selling the occasional piece meant I could keep painting. Back then, I never imagined my artwork would end up in private collections across Europe.

Matthias Adler bought some of my earliest paintings for next to nothing. He had an extraordinary confidence in his own taste and, irritatingly, he was often right. A few years later, when my work had begun attracting more attention, he offered to sell one back to me for considerably more than he had paid. I told him exactly what I thought of that offer. He found it very funny.

That was Matthias. He loved art, but he loved a good deal almost as much. I never quite knew whether he collected paintings because he admired them or because he enjoyed knowing he'd spotted something before everyone else.

These days, I want people to engage with my work rather than simply glance with passing interest. It's often the smallest details that matter most to me. Sometimes you have to find your own meaning in the work.

Faces appear frequently in my paintings, particularly eyes. They can tell an entire story without giving everything away.

For me, art should never reveal everything at once.