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Mercedes Helnwein is a visual artist and writer, born in Vienna, Austria.  She moved to Ireland and the US with her family in her teens, consciously choosing not to attend art schools. Heavily inspired by American culture, her work is known for its large-scale oil pastels, predominantly populated by nurses, beauty queens, witches, cheerleaders, and the visual theatrics of American adolescence.

Her novel “Slingshot” was published in April 2021 by Wednesday Books/St. Martin's Press.

www.mercedeshelnwein.com  www.mercedeshelnweinbooks.com

The main inspiration to my work is usually music because there is no better place to get such immediate emotional ammunition to play with.  I’m always looking for the promise of a story when I’m doing a drawing or painting.  Music supplies the story in the quickest way I know.  Doing something in relation with Pretty on the Inside felt like a very natural cross-pollination to me — not only because it supplies so much story, but also because the world of this album seemed already so innately connected to the girls/women in my work. It felt like the perfect emotional landscape to these girls that have had their battles smeared across their faces — and I wanted to do a portrait that came close to that idea.