B has painted a portrait of her dead mother.

Alone in her studio, feverish but not ill, she moves between the painting, an overgrown vegetable garden, unpaid expenses, and the question that keeps returning: what kind of artist is she supposed to be?

Meanwhile, Copenhagen is filling up with art fairs, openings, champagne, oysters, gallerists and artists who know how to dress for the occasion.

B stays home.

Until she gets hungry.

A new literary episode of Living by Making about art, ambition, money, mothers, the body — and the strange relief of being somewhere no one is looking at you.

In this episode of Living by Making, I tell the story of a woman called B.

For years, I believed my fear around money came from being an artist. But what if the story began much earlier?

Web: https://www.mianelle.dk/

For eleven years, six months and twenty days, I have counted time differently.

In this episode I reflect on addiction, ambition, shame and the strange contradictions of building an artistic life. From AA meetings in Denmark to an artist residency in Berlin, from quietly observing a famous writer in my favourite café to confronting my own fear of being seen, this is an essay about longing—for recognition, belonging, and the courage to show up as oneself.

Along the way, I explore how perfectionism, social anxiety and the fantasy of becoming "someone" can keep us hidden, even while we desperately want to be found.

Part memoir, part meditation on art and recovery, this episode asks whether success begins not with trying harder—but with trying softer.

Instagram: mianelle_studio

In 2018, I was given the opportunity to create a monumental wall painting as part of a solo exhibition in a large gallery built around an empty swimming pool.

In this episode of Living by Making, I share the story of spending four days alone at a local market in Denmark, trying to sell my art from a small tent between crystal sellers, ceramic vulvas, and a tanning salon.

What begins as a practical attempt to earn money slowly turns into a reflection on class, visibility, the art world, survival, and what it feels like to create while living with a nervous system in constant alarm.

This episode moves between humour, exhaustion, social anxiety, art, and the strange reality of trying to build a life through making.

It is also an episode about the body — and the small sensory rituals that sometimes help us stay present when everything inside us wants to flee.

From local market to museum show.

I share fragments from my life:
living on almost nothing,
standing in a supermarket unable to choose,
and working for years inside a prison with men convicted of severe crimes — where something unexpected began to unfold.

This is an episode about vulnerability, dignity, and the invisible structures shaping an artist’s life.

And maybe also a question:
What is art worth — and to whom?

—

You are not alone. I see you.

🌿 Website: www.mianelle.dk


This week, I received a working grant from the Danish Arts Foundation — after fifteen years of rejection.

In this episode, I reflect on what it means to finally be “recognised” as an artist.

On the idea of the elite — and the quiet feeling of still being outside of it.

On the realities of working conditions in the art world, money, and the body under pressure.

This is a personal essay about value, survival, and the moment something shifts — not in the system, but inside.

This episode moves between past and present, between memory and the act of making.

A poetic reflection on the role of the artist in a capitalist world.