This is the unvarnished autobiography of an artist who is as expressive with words as she is with colors and graphite. Monika von Starck (born 1939) recounts her childhood in Cologne, overshadowed by the Allied bombing raids, her youth during a time of hardship in the post-war era, and her artistic training, including at the legendary art academy in Düsseldorf, which was then shaken by Joseph Beuys and his expanded concept of art. Monika von Starck now lives as a freelance artist in Cologne. Her painted works, featuring surreal worlds on large-format oil paintings, address the fundamental themes of human existence: birth and death, the bliss of paradise and the fears of hell, power, powerlessness, and loneliness in a highly technologized world.