S4, E7 Sarah and Rakel Wienberg

Sarah and Rakel Wienburg are sisters who are visual artists focusing on water colour, sculpture and photography. They collaborate on works of art to visualise emotions and other unseen things. The episode was recorded on the 12 November 2024.

Instagram: @wienbergsisters

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Welcome to Artist Tales, the podcast that features and celebrates artists from different walks of life. I'm your host, Heather Martin, and in this episode, I'm speaking with Sarah and Rakel Weinberg, two sisters who are visual artists focusing on watercolour, sculpture and photography. Welcome Sarah and Rakel.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Happy to be here. It's really good to have you both. So I'll start with asking, you know, just tell me a little bit about yourself. So maybe Rakel, if you can start first. So we grew up in Denmark in a small town, a couple of miles away from the sea, part of a big family. We have, um, we have five siblings altogether.

It was a bit of a very, it was a loving home, but also very chaotic. We often talk about how it was probably a bit of a neurodiverse system we grew up in. So me and Sarah, we kind of found each other in that. And, um, became a team on that slightly chaotic background. So, I mean, we often say that we raised each other, and I do think that's kind of probably what happened.

And so a lot of our artistic or creative inclinations, they started very early, I think, just in play. And, you know, children of the nineties, uh, there was, uh, not much to do. So we, you know, explored and played  Did lots of creative stuff, I think, without even really knowing it. Yeah, I'm a photographer and, um, I, um, trained in film school, which I graduated in, in  2010, I want to say it was here in London, I should say.

I was really interested in experimental film and in documentary. And so that's kind of how my visual journey started. Yeah, that, that was what I wanted to pursue when I graduated, but, um, a lot of things happened when I graduated. And, uh, eventually I picked up stills photography in 2019 after having been on maternity leave with my daughter.

So that was my. super old Canon 7D that I had bought straight after film school, which I just decided to learn sort of after having been in a, in a maternity fog for, for a year. And that was about the time Sarah as well came back onto the scene after having had a bit of a detour with kids as well. So maybe I should bring it over to Sarah at this point. 

So yeah, Sarah, tell us a bit about yourself as well. Yes. Um, I think I'll have to start back. Like Rachel did, I'll just, uh, give you a little bit of our back story. Yeah, as Rachel mentioned, we grew up in a really big family, which was not your typical family. And Rachel took the plunge and said, Neurodiverse.

So, yeah, I can only speak for myself, but, uh, definitely have found in later years that there is definitely some ADHD there.  It's not diagnosed, but it's been a very big revelation for me to, to discover about myself. And so we were a family that I think there was a lot of creativity there. Our, I would, I'd really wanted to mention that our mom was someone who she did, she never really fitted in where we were.

So we were this family and we went to church. We were grow, we grew up Christian and our beautiful mom was always just didn't really fit in. Sticking out. Yeah.  So she was just someone who would probably, I see her as someone who was highly creative, highly sensitive and highly creative. And our grandmother was a photographer in the fifties.

She was a single mom with these two little ones.  She was also a creative woman. She came from Germany and decided to move to Denmark. And I feel that there was always a little bit of this not really fitting in going on. So, our grandmother didn't really match her time, being a photographer in the 50s, a single mom.

And, um, our mom was a little bit out of place. And, um, later on, I think we also felt that way.  And decided to leave Denmark, because maybe there's somewhere. That's a little bit more,  there's a bit more space for people there. But yeah, I do want to say that I felt like there was quite a bit of chaos around us, but there was also a lot of freedom, a lot of creativity and me and Rachel, we developed a really close bond.

As you said, we were always playing together, but today I was thinking about. how Rachel would tell stories in the evening. She would be my personal entertainer. So in the bedroom she would be telling endless jokes and stories and make me double over with laughter and mom would always come and have to shush us down.

I think there was a lot of creativity in those evenings and all of those silly stories we came up with. And also, I remembered us doing this operatic singing things that we  used to do all the time. We would just kind of freestyle this operatic singing. And it was like these strange harmonies that we would create.

It was just a lot of creativity in all directions. So we also had these, we were building things together and we would be drawing together. But yeah, I also, this memory came to mind today where I collect. Do you remember when we accidentally became beggars in the street? No. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. We were entertaining these groups of drunk people that one night in Copenhagen.

That's right. Yeah, yes. So, um, Oh, that was a great evening. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.  Yeah, I thought that was a fun one too.  Yeah, that's true. Actually, I think we, we did a fair amount of entertaining back when Sarah, she played the, she played the guitar. She was really good on the guitar and we just did some wild jamming and, uh, I still to this day can't, I just. 

But we didn't have the guitar in the street though, did we? I think we didn't have the guitar. I feel like that was a guitar somewhere. I think we were just singing and we were not. That's difficult. 

So, but yeah, it was a lot of fun, you know, it was a lot of fun being Rachel's sister. Yeah. And, uh, yeah, that was kind of the genesis. The genesis. Of my creative story.  But did I say, I did want to say that I think mom was quite amazing because she, she was someone who, she allowed us all of our emotions. So as we grew up.

But it was okay to have emotions, and it was okay not to be sad, to be depressed even, or to be anxious. And she was able to, we were allowed to speak and express those things, and I think that was part of this. whole artistic journey as well. Yeah, I would, I would call it an emotionally liberal family, I think is what, what we was.

And I, and I think that definitely has, has a lot of, it makes it for a lot of foundational elements in our work today. The fact that, that no emotions were off limits and, um, the waves would sometimes go really, really high in our house. But also, after those thunderstorms, our, the sky was really clear and, and we had really good relationships based on that, I think.

Yeah. I'll come back to you about the emotional side and the impact it's had on your art. So Sarah, what sort of things do you do? So I did mention, you know, there's watercolor, sculpture, and photography, and it sounds like Rakel does the photography. Do you do the watercolor and sculpture then, or? Yeah, so, the way it is at the moment is actually I'm very much exploring expressive charcoal drawing.

So that's, it's become kind of the heartbeat of what I do. I've discovered gesture drawings. So, we've actually, right now, we're in a little bit of a separate development time where each of us are working on their own craft. And so, for me, this is very much drawing. That is the heart of what I do. But I've been, in collaboration with Rakko, I would do the watercolour, mostly.

It would be me doing the, the colour and, yes, the sculpture as well. How closely do you work together? Because it sounds like perhaps at the moment you're kind of, you're working not as closely, but do you work fairly close together usually? Or do you kind of wax and wane? Do you kind of, you know, do your own thing come together?

Do your own thing come together? Or like, how does it work? Yes. So it's been a situation very much of waxing and waning where we've been actually, I think we've dipped into working together as a collaborative act, because we've always. had this shared creativity and it just felt like it was a natural thing we had to try and do.

But with life being quite intense and that it takes a long time to develop your specific creative expression, that at the moment, we've both, each of us sort of crossed over into each other's path a little bit. So Rackle have had these wonderful movement photography, and I was kind of interested in trying to express some of that.

So that has been what I've been doing. been exploring with my movement charcoal drawing that I'm doing at the moment and she was very interested to get into the watercolor. So we've sort of crossed over into each other's fields now and we're dabbling like we just kind of found that it's better for for the time being to be working apart but the nature of our partnership is very much that we have been supported each other through the child care.

So one person will take care of the children and the other one is then free to do the artwork. And that was kind of the way the whole thing started and how we developed this working, the partnership. And I, and I think also one thing is that we always have worked together with whatever we've done in life.

There's always been a team. When we started doing art, both of us sort of simultaneously, as we were also supporting each other with the kids, we got a lot of feedback from people around us. pointing out that our work had a lot of similar themes that we hadn't really paid attention to ourselves. We hadn't really seen how connected a lot of our work was until it was pointed out to us continuously. 

And so we decided, I think, at that point that, well, let's see what happens if we really bring it together and start properly merging it as well. And what has the feedback been about you guys working more closely together? Good.  Well, it was really cool. I mean, we did it, we jumped in for a show on Holy Art Fair where we merged our things together and we didn't have long to prepare, so we jumped into it maybe a little bit without enough time to think about it, but maybe that was also what really worked.

That was probably a good thing, yeah. Yeah. So we decided to just go for it and I would just start to add my touches to raffles and  photographs and we would do these prints and add watercolor over the top of it and we'd kind of do this work together. We also merged your drawings into, we composited into my portraits in, uh, yes, also digitally and you also marked on top of it.

We did a lot of things very, very fast, but it was something we had been building up to for a long time and this was This moment when we, we suddenly had a show, another show. We found ourselves a little bit in a position where we didn't have enough for two shows at the same time. Yeah. And we were like, this is the time, this is the moment where we have to do it.

And we just went for it. And that was really good because then in the aftermath, when we sort of landed after it, having had actually a really wonderful experience showing our work together and having it be an an us thing, not a this is hers and this is mine, but this is ours. experience that was really, that was really special.

And then in the aftermath, when we started thinking, coming back into our heads about it, it started getting a little bit more difficult where we were like, Oh, this was probably good that we did it really fast. Because, um, we probably wouldn't have been able to make it work so easily otherwise. I think there's also something to be said about, although you were kind of like, right, focused on doing this.

There's probably something where You had to get it done and there's probably a little bit of spontaneity because he had to get it done and he didn't overthink it and what I'm hearing is You know, and I think it's probably very similar for a lot of people and whether you're producing something artistically or you're working on a, you know, at work or that sort of thing, if you think about it too much, then it's, it's either not as good or you struggle with it.

Absolutely. And you also asked, how did people respond to it? And I wanted to say it was really special because there was this woman that bought a picture and she actually started crying when she looked at it. Do you remember Raclette? I don't know if It was glow, yes. Yeah, but we, we saw the picture and she's, she looked at it and she said, I feel peaceful when she saw it.

And I just love that it really seemed to connect to people's hearts. It was very, very special. I don't know if there was something about just, Not being able to kind of say, I did this, that, you know, you put your ego to one side and that something can happen in that space, which was quite special, I thought, which was quite amazing.

I think kind of that reaction from the woman who bought the piece of work and got emotionally, I don't want to say involved, but kind of got a bit emotional about it. You know, it's probably touched something in her, and there's that authenticity in, in the art, which I think you can, often with art, you can see whether it's authentic or not, whether it's kind of speaking a story, speaking a truth, or speaking in the emotion, as you phrased earlier, and it kind of touches people in certain ways.

Completely. Yeah, I think absolutely. I mean, that's what you can only hope for, really, those kind of moments where it connects with someone at a more intimate level. Yeah, I thought that was great. Such a, that is a moment I will forever treasure to have had that moment and seeing such a reaction from someone then you feel that you can really, that your artwork can really mean something when it can reach people like that.

So I thought that was really amazing. But I think a lot of that, I think that comes a lot from Rachel because I feel like she's got so much. super powerful touch there. She's very in touch with her emotion with the photography that she does and there's Always that's what I love about your pictures and that felt great to be able to claim some of the honor for it as well But also to point out, it's a collaborative work as well.

A hundred percent. I was involved. I was involved, and I'm very proud to say.  My drawing was also in this picture, so it was a combination of us both. Yes, exactly. I mean, what Sarah just said, I don't, I don't think I can support that, really. But I definitely, yeah, it's, uh, it's great. But those are very kind words and completely exaggerated.

Not at all, no. It was a complete collaboration, of course, and um, yeah, we can both. You can both claim credit. Exactly, yeah.  We can both claim credit,  equally in equal measure. You mentioned earlier that you grew up in an environment where emotion You could express it, you could talk about it, you could, you know, it's kind of an acceptable or safe space to feel emotion and talk about it.

And that is such a tonic to, I think, many societies where, you know, particularly, I'm thinking of British society, but I'm Canadian, I think there's also an element of this in Canada. Don't really talk about emotions as much. It's a bit of a taboo. And I'm just, I guess the question I would like to ask is how much of that influences your art?

You know, how much of that? You know, being able to express yourself emotionally comes out through your artwork. I totally resonate with emotion being quite the driving force in both my work and Rakel's work. And when I was at uni, I went through a long time where I tried to get up in my head, but it was quite difficult because we were kind of encouraged to do conceptual art, so you kind of have, you think of the idea, it's got some sort of a meaning, it's relevant in some way, shape, or form.

But after I came out of that, it took me a while to kind of just realize that this is not the real reason for me to be creating art. What I'm doing it for is very simple. I just need to express something that some, something emotional. And it's kind of an intuitive process. It doesn't start with an idea or a concept.

It kind of comes from the heart and it's very much based on expressing a feeling, which seems a little bit. It's not very intellectual to say, but it makes a lot of sense. And the more I pursue it that way, the more it just makes sense to me. I feel that the way we make art is the same way a musician makes music.

It's. It's an expression of emotion. It's very much about wanting to, because it's not just like having an emotion and then creating from that emotion. But for me, it's, it's more about sort of, it's also about searching for something that evokes something. So as you're working or with a piece to me, it feels like I'm looking for something that I know when I find it, I'll recognize it.

And it'll be. Either by like an emotional recognition but also maybe a sensation or a memory or I feel like that's the the act or the motivation or the drive behind creating for me and for us that it's like a it's I would call it a search for something that I I know when I see it I recognize it and the hope is that you You bring it into the world and some other people might recognize it as well.

And then when that happens, that's when there's a little bit of magic from that recognition. Yeah, and I think that also ties back to what you're saying about the woman who bought the piece of art and kind of welled up or, you know, felt the emotion. It goes back to that authenticity. It goes back to beyond the thinking, beyond the cerebral.

It kind of touches something perhaps a bit deeper. That's right. I think so, yeah. And I think that's, That's why we're here doing what we're doing, you know, that's the meat of it, or the heart of it, of it all, definitely. But it doesn't have to be a, you know, a big moment, it can also just be a small moment, you know.

It can just be curiosity, or delight, it could be anything, it doesn't have to be big, heavy, and it doesn't have to be tearful. But it's wonderful when it is,  but it doesn't have to be. It's also, I think what we're doing, you know, we're just following like a little trail of what feels Good to be doing, or good to be exploring, and that keeps that little trail of Inspiration.

Yes, yeah. Inspiration, and I, from what you're saying as well, exploration. Very much. Experimentation as well. And that allows you to stay with something. I mean, that's what I find it with the experimental element of it is, it's more like um, It just allows you to sit with something for way longer than you would have otherwise sat with it and just let it become something as it sort of, you know, you just, you're experimenting, you're having fun with it, but it's also showing itself to be something at the same time.

Yeah, revealing itself, perhaps. That's really nice, yeah.  We've talked about the emotions, you know, how emotions can drive you at work. What are the influences that you've had over your artistic career journey? I would love to take you back to one of the first influences that would, I would say, is my mum. I have this memory of sitting with mom at the kitchen table and mom was drawing this little picture of a little toothpaste and she did some little squiggly lines and then it started animating the lid of the toothpaste.

And I just remember being so fascinated that she could make something animate on the paper. And, um, I think, not just her little drawing in that moment, but I think there was something, there was a lot of creativity in my mom, that's in her and around her. And that kind of just was, I think that was a bit, that was the beginning of this whole art journey of mine.

Then I had the next person on my list is of course my sister.  that she was always a huge influence because we always had this creativity bouncing back and forth between each other. But then as I grew older and I've discovered that the thing that I really love is drawing. My first love was da Vinci's drawings.

I love his drawings. So I felt that there was some beautiful mystery in his drawings. I much preferred his drawings to the paintings. Much prefer his little drawings of the inventions and the little planes that he made than Mona Lisa any day of the week. And yeah, so I was just on the pursuit of drawing.

So Da Vinci was a big one for me. He's a big one for many people, but I also discovered an artist called Charlie Mackesy and always loved the sculptures of Da Vinci. Giacometti, these expressive sculptures. And on, yeah, I also have on my list other people that I've loved, artists that I love is Olafur Eliasson.

I love installation art, Anthony Gormley, and Cornelia Parker, so I love their installations. So, those are definitely people that have had some sort of inspirational effect on my life. And, yeah, I also have Monk on my list. Yeah, if I would answer the same question, it would definitely be, of course, Sarah as well.

I think Sarah was always the artist in the family and I was more like a all sorts  and it was only way way later that also very much through Sarah that I discovered that I wanted to make art as well. So I can totally attribute that to you. But other influences for me, uh, of course from film, because that's where I started my journey.

I was, uh, very interested in, uh, Dogma films. I don't know if you remember those. There's these films from the Lars von Trier and his whole cohort in Denmark, which were based on having this very low budget production, but the core of the They had a manifesto, which was sort of a set of rules that they had to make a film based on.

But what I'm trying to get at, and that was interesting to me, was back to emotion again. The raw emotion that was always very, very present in these shaky films. It was always handheld camera. It had to be handheld and There's this film, Breaking the Waves, which had a huge influence on my work, I think, for just the rawness of it, so yeah.

Another influence is Brooke Shaden, a fine arts photographer whose work is self portraits. And she does these very elaborate composites with her, usually always herself, in it somehow. But these They're very, very, um, expressive and very, I would call them heavy. I always want to say they're heavy and just very beautiful and expressive.

So when I came across her work, that's when I thought you can be a photographer and an artist. And that was quite exciting as well for me to discover. So it sounds like, you know, there's been a lot of influences, and you influence each other, and I'm sure even doing through your collaboration, and your collaborative working together, there's influence, but I, I'm also hearing dialogue, because you work together.

Absolutely. Yes. I think on a daily basis, we will be talking a lot.  Sarah is my, um, my sort of processing machine that, you know, I'll call her up and then we just sort of talk and it doesn't really stop. And it's like a, an ongoing conversation that definitely works as a sounding board to, um, whatever is going on with my work.

It's definitely, she's definitely a sounding board. Yes, we have these kind of endless, endless conversations where we kind of psychoanalyze each other and ourselves. And we, you know, we share everything with each other. We're forever trying to work things out, figure ourselves out. And I think our work is very much like an extension of that dialogue that is continually.

going on and sometimes it's, it's happening while we work. I'll have her on the phone while I'm working and we'll just be kind of talking and expressing. And it's a lot. We call it therapy, really. That's what we call it. So what's next? Do you have any sort of upcoming projects or upcoming exhibitions at all?

We have an exhibition on at the moment. We have one, we have one right now, yes. We have an exhibition on right now. It's in the Paxton Art Center in Crystal Palace. And we are there as the Weinberg Sisters with a live performance. little flurry of our pictures on the wall there. And it's a bit of a mix of stuff we've done collaboratively and stuff we've done separately.

And we kind of put it all together in a, in this little display that we've got on there. It's up for the rest of November. So end of November 2024. But for projects at the moment, I'm actually focusing quite a bit on sharing my artistic process on YouTube. So I'm becoming a YouTuber at the moment and that's a big one for me because I really would love to establish myself more online and start to, to create some more sales.

We've got a webshop together as well on our Veenbergsisters. com and I really want to establish that and build on our online presence and try to be able to sell, sell more artwork through the webshop and through doing this. It's YouTube videos as well, so I'm focusing a bit on the online more than physical shows, although I still want to be involved with that, and we also still will be doing lots more things.

It's not yet planned in. The website for the Weinberg Sisters is in the podcast notes, for anybody who'd like to look at their website. All right. So. Do you have anything else, Rakel, to add? Anything that you'll be involved with? Yeah, no, that would be it, really. Like Sarah said, just becoming more solid with our online presence and hopefully picking up more video again, I'm thinking.

So I have a lot of plans, a lot of hopes for projects to come, especially for things that we will be collaborating on as well. We also have a bit of a trio collaboration booked in for the spring now. Spring 2025, we've got, we have a little WhatsApp group formed with a friend of ours called Julia Yaldina, and we're gonna do some collaborative work, and she's also a photographer, so I don't know what's gonna happen with that at all, but I'm excited about doing that as well, and now I've said it in public, so now it will definitely be happening.

Julia is a photographer that I have collaborated with before, and she does amazing work that I have had the pleasure of working with her on as well. So yeah, definitely looking forward to that in the springtime. Well, Greta, it sounds like you have some very interesting work and very interesting projects that you're working on.

I'd really like to thank you both for chatting with me. It's been really interesting. Thank you very much for having us here. Thanks so much. I really enjoyed it.  I really appreciate you listening to this episode with Sarah and Rakel. I hope you enjoyed it. For more information about Sarah and Rakel, including their social media handles, check out the episode notes.

I'd really appreciate it if you could also rate and review the podcast in the podcast apps. In the next episode, I've a really interesting conversation with Sikori, a London based photographer, curator, and gallery owner. I look forward to you joining me for the next episode.