Living By Making

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 sta...

In this episode of Living by Making, I tell the story of a woman called B. B is an artist. She lives in Denmark. She makes things, worries about money, searches for meaning, and tries to understand what it means to build a life around making. But this time, I wanted to tell the story differently. By stepping outside myself and writing in the third person, B became both me and someone I could obser...

For years, I believed my fear around money came from being an artist. But what if the story began much earlier? In this episode, I reflect on ambition, art, class, family, and the beliefs we inherit without choosing them. Moving between my studio, memories of my parents, and the Danish countryside where I now live, I explore how my father's relationship with work and money quietly became my own—an...

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 recog...

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. For two days, I painted obsessively — covering more than eighty square metres of wall with flowers, animals, and colour. The exhibition became one of the biggest artistic opportunities of my career. Yet, alone in a borrowed apartment the nig...

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 nervo...

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...

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,...

This episode moves between past and present, between memory and the act of making. It is about drawing, painting, and trying to hold on to something that keeps slipping away. About childhood, repetition, and the body remembering before the mind does. A reflection on what it means to make something good— and what it costs to keep trying. Follow my instagram: @mianelle_studio or visit my website www...

A poetic reflection on the role of the artist in a capitalist world. Between money, meaning, and a night walk in the forest, I explore what it means to create—and belong—today. Website: www.mianelle.dk   Instgram: mianelle_studio

From preparing breakfast for Airbnb guests at my farmhouse in Denmark to thinking about class, grants, day jobs, art school debt, and what it means to make art while carrying a working-class history in the body, this is an episode about survival, shame, labour, and the strange intimacy of trying to build a life through creative work. Instagram: @mianelle_studio Web: www.mianelle.dk Email: studio@m...

What happens when your integrity and your survival pull in different directions? In this episode, I reflect on the tension between staying true to your artistic voice and trying to make a living within a system that often asks for something else. From my farmhouse in Denmark, I move between the soil, the studio, and the gallery world — through experiences with commercial galleries, years of holdin...

What does it mean to continue making art when it does not pay the rent? In this episode, I reflect on the quiet panic that can live alongside a creative life — the tension between devotion to the work and the very practical question of survival. From my farmhouse studio in Denmark, I speak about money, doubt, class, and the strange persistence that keeps many artists working even when the numbers...

In this episode of Living by Making, I reflect on the years when alcohol quietly became a way of coping with anxiety, pressure, and doubt. Through memories of early sobriety, AA meetings, and a strange encounter with a Catholic priest who believed a demon lived inside me, I explore what it meant to face addiction while trying to build a life as an artist. It is a story about survival, art, and the...

I had 3.5 pounds. No address. And I was told to go back where I came from. This episode moves from chronic pain and no income in the countryside to my return from Glasgow in 2013, being labelled “IMMIGRANT” in my own country, nearly losing my body to illness, and the collapse of my first solo show. It’s about poverty inside the art world. About welfare systems that don’t catch you. About drinking...

What happens after your first solo show fails? In this episode, I share the two years I spent in Glasgow — navigating money, mental health, ambition, and survival — and what they taught me about living by making without a safety net. If this episode speaks to you, you’re welcome to join my monthly letter for artists and makers. Each month I share reflections on painting, artistic courage, creative...

My first solo show in London in 2010 — and I didn’t have the money for it. If this episode speaks to you, you’re welcome to join my monthly letter for artists and makers. Each month I share reflections on painting, artistic courage, creative structure and the inner life of making. You’ll also receive early access to new works and invitations to mentorship and masterclasses. Join here: STAY CONNECT...

Meet me at my Degree Show in Fine Art (2010). This episode begins there — at the moment where money, hope, ambition, and fear quietly start to hum in the background of an artist’s life. If this episode speaks to you, you’re welcome to join my monthly letter for artists and makers. Each month I share reflections on painting, artistic courage, creative structure and the inner life of making. You’ll...