Art For Art's Sake

Lee Clough (36) is an artist - she mainly does painting and drawing - living and working in Berlin. She was born, raised and educated in the UK, where she worked for several years at the Tate Modern art gallery before moving to Berlin in May 2006.

E&M: Why did you originally move to Berlin?

Lee: When I was working in London I wanted to concentrate more on my art. I found that the cost of living, the daily grind of commuting really was eating into the time I had to work on my art.

Photo: Lee Clough

Art is worth the risk

I spent ages trying to think of a way to make more time and opportunities for myself to focus on my art. Then suddenly, when I was discussing this problem with a German colleague at the Tate Modern, she suggested moving to Berlin. Also, I noticed that a lot of the artists I was working with seemed to be living in Berlin, which strengthened the idea in my head. And Berlin has indeed offered me the opportunity to work in an exciting environment with lots of other artists. Also, it's so cheap compared to London that I can work part-time and still get by really comfortably, which gives me more time to work on my art. There's no way I could have afforded to do that in London. So anyway, I took her advice, and three months later I was here! Although I'd only visited a couple of times, it was similar in many ways to how I'd imagined, and it definitely lived up to my expectations.

E&M: What have been your biggest problems moving abroad?

Lee: There was a funny feeling of dependency, especially at first when I constantly had to ask people for help because of the language. My German is improving now though - I'm managing to fill out more official forms by myself! But yeah, if there are problems, especially at a bureaucratic level, I do feel a bit out of my depth sometimes. On the whole though, I do feel quite relaxed here - I don't get the overwhelming feeling of speed, the sense of life cramming in on you that I used to experience every time I arrived back in London. So there are difficulties, but overall I feel that I'm coping well.

E&M: How did you deal with the language barrier?

Lee: Well, in Berlin you have a big buffer because everyone speaks English. That is a bit of a double-edged sword though, because it has prevented me from learning German as fast as I would have done had it been more necessary. At school German was the foreign language I found the easiest and enjoyed the most. It's coming along, but somewhat slowly...

E&M: Did you have a hard time finding a job when you moved to Berlin?

Photo: Lee Clough

Finding rather than searching

Lee: Actually, contrary to what I'd expected, the language difference wasn't a problem at all. I'm a native English speaker and that opened up a lot of opportunities that I wouldn't have had in London. I wanted to work as an artist's assistant, and being a native English speaker was a route into that, because I started out by correcting English manuals for his installations. With regard to finding a more permanent job, however, I do need to polish my German before I can get more settled. I'm sure I'll manage though!

E&M: How much contact have you maintained with your home country? How do you keep up with what's happening back home?

Lee: Well, funnily enough, for about the first year and a half, I felt like I had one foot in Berlin and the other in London - I could jump back and forth pretty easily. More recently however, I've noticed that I'm now definitely based in Berlin, and I'm a bit out of the loop in London. I'm still very much in touch with my friends though - they come over to visit me a lot and vice versa. Also, my parents keep me in touch with little snippets of news that you wouldn't get watching the BBC or listening to the radio. My moving to Berlin has kind of filtered out the friends who were not so serious and I've lost touch with them. But I do feel like my good friends put in a lot of effort and are really eager to stay in touch. We visit each other a lot and in a way it's strengthened our friendship, as we appreciate each other more when we see each other.

E&M: Do you feel that moving abroad has changed you?

Lee: I definitely feel happier with where my life is, what I'm doing and who I am. In London I felt like I was always fighting to be who I wanted to be and to do what I wanted to do. Berlin has made me much calmer and more relaxed. Furthermore, I feel like I've grown in confidence, because here it seems like my dreams and wishes are easier to realise.

E&M: What are your plans for the future? Are you planning to stay in Berlin for longer?

Lee: Well, I'm actually considering my options at the moment. I originally set myself a two-year trial period in Berlin. Now those two years have passed and I find I'm really enjoying it here. I have a stable base of friends without having lost touch with my friends back home.

I'm currently working as an artist's assistant in Kreuzberg and I really like my job. However, it's a free-lance position and at some point I'd like to get a job with a longer-term contract. So now I'm looking at the possibilities open to me as regards finding a permanent job. I'm considering going back to England to do teacher training, so I could move back to Berlin after that and maybe teach in an international language school. So in the long term, I do really want to stay in Berlin, get a stable job and settle down here. In the even longer term however, I definitely have a vision in the back of my mind of going back to England eventually, although there's no foreseeable moment in the near future when that would happen.