About me

I am also a self-healer who through intense healing work healed herself from a complex childhood trauma and found out her purpose in life is to be an artist. 

 

Writing has always been a part of my life in one way or another. It became vital during the healing journey I had embarked on a long time ago as it helped and still helps me to get things off my chest.

Also, every now and then thoughts pop into my mind that I need to write down. I call them “spilled thoughts”. 

 

At one point in my healing journey I rediscovered the love for painting I had lost when I was a kid, because I wasn’t “talented” and my pictures weren’t good enough in other people’s opinion. To me this meant healing my inner little girl was making progress.

It was in January 2022 that I started to draw using Procreate on an iPad. 

2022 also was the year I turned 60 and no I wasn’t too old to start over 😉

Actually, in Japan the 60th birthday is special, because then a person has gone five times through the Chinese zodiac circle and is back at her/his original birth zodiac. 

In other words, the 60th birthday is your big chance to start over and this perfectly fitted my situation then as I had just left work for good.

Being able to paint full time speeded things up a bit; meaning my skills improved a lot.

Plus, just like writing before, painting became my therapy as well.

 

Enter: Ella!

In July 2023, I became aware that despite or better because of a lot of healing work I had accomplished until then, there was a part of me - “the wild one” - hidden deep down inside of me; safely stowed away from harm and that it would be safe for her to be set free.

The name for this part, that came to my mind is “Ella”. Setting her free didn’t take that long. For details on how, please read my blog entry “Painting as Therapy or My Story Part 2”. 

So, Ella became my second name, totally unofficial of course, but important enough for me to use it along my given name “Sabine” to sign my work from that point onward. Though it took until now to use it on my website as well.

 

Enter: Fleur de Liberté

Not long after that I was working on saving a little painting when a flower that had popped into my mind some months before and that had wanted to be drawn over and over again ever since demanded to be drawn on that painting. While doing that the French word "liberté" (freedom) popped into my head along with the wonderful poem “Liberté” by Paul Eduard. I reread it and especially the last two verses hit me like never before. So, the flower became my “Fleur de Liberté” and this is why I add it when I sign a picture.

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In case you’re wondering about the French thing: I am German and naturally my native language is German. But I also speak English and French and those of you who speak more than one language can surely relate when I say that some things can only be expressed in one of those languages – and not necessarily your mother tongue – just because it only feels right to say them in that particular language. 

For me “Liberté” is such a word. Neither “Freiheit” (German) nor “Freedom” express what “Liberté” means to me and of course this is difficult if not impossible to fully explain to you, but I will try, nevertheless: It’s having healed myself from childhood trauma, becoming my authentic self while at the same time freeing the artist in me I should have been in the first place. It’s this incredible feeling of growing, of leaving the past behind me, becoming more and more confident as an artist, becoming more and more ME.

 

Love,

Sabine Ella ❤️

February 2026