Audi 2009 Annual Report Download - page 75

More space
he attic of an Art Nouveau
style building located on
Munich’s east side conceals
Patricia Petapermal’s treasure. On a
shelf there is a small box bearing an
inscription that reads “Gold.” However,
the sparkling metal platelets, tubes
of paint and threads are not part of
the 46-year-old’s pension fund, but
are the raw materials for her paint-
ings. The attic functions as the artist’s
storage space and studio. The real
treasure for Patricia Petapermal is
not her gold leaf supplies or the art-
works that now fetch several thousand
euros at auctions, but the fact that
she is alive and able to paint. Born in
1963 of French and Indian parents,
the artist studied economics and later
worked at the Paris Stock Exchange.
“I had a good life, a nice apartment,”
nights working on her colorful, multi-
layered paintings. Oil paint is not the
only material applied to the canvas –
she also uses photographs, newspaper
clippings, rose petals and silver
threads. “I remix the material of life.
Each picture is a window into a world
of its own.”
T
PATRICIA PETAPERMAL
Broker starts over again
BRITA KLAS
My summer on a mountain farm
hose who imagine life on an alpine farm as an idyll are unfortunately
wrong. The ascent from the valley up to a height of 1,800 meters was for
me, training to be a teacher, like a journey back in time. Not only because
there is no cell phone reception, central heating or TV. At this altitude you are part
of nature and live in rhythm with it. The work has to be done, day in, day out,
no matter if it’s dark outside, warm or cold, if the sun’s shining or if it happens to
be raining again. The farm I worked on as a dairymaid in 2007 has been run
by a family for several decades. It’s no surprise that people’s values of discipline
and hierarchy are very different up there. At least we have milking machines
and electric fences now, which is more than can be said for 50 years ago. But the
work is still hard: You get up at quarter to four every morning to milk the cows,
muck out the sheds and make the cheese. During one summer, we turned
80,000 liters of milk from our 90 cows into 7.8 tons of cheese and 700 kilograms
of butter. Although the farm is so far from the fast-moving, overcrowded city,
you are never alone. You have to share the limited space there is with the other
workers and hardly have any privacy at all. It’s not easy, but the unity and sense of
togetherness can certainly be a help when times get hard. I learned so much on
the farm – and I don’t just mean how to make cheese and mend fences. Above
all I have become a good team leader and organizer. I have now spent my third
season in the mountains.
T
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“
The accident caused
me to rethink my life.”
Patricia Petapermal, painter
she remembers. However, in 1993,
she spent six months in hospital after
being hit by a car in London. “The acci-
dent caused me to rethink my life,”
she says. Patricia Petapermal was fed
up of categorizing life into debit and
credit and as a result enrolled at an art
school. Today, she often spends entire