I’ve loved painting for as long as I can remember. Even as a hyper kid growing up in Ethiopia, where my dad worked as an engineer, I could just lose myself in it.

When we moved back to Germany [where she was born in 1980], I did art at school but only started graffiti after my friend gave me a book, Graffiti Art: Deutschland-Germany. I’d won a few art youth prizes and had my first solo show, but I was looking for my own identity and this was what I’d been looking for. Graffiti art has this incredible history and there’s a worldwide creative community where you can be whoever you want.

I didn’t yet know how male-dominated the graffiti industry was, but anonymity is part of the culture. I wanted to be judged by my art, not my gender, so I avoided pink that might have given me away as a girl and came up with the stage name ‘MadC’. The two boys I used to paint with, one from school and another I borrowed paint from, used to call me ‘the mad one’, and the C is for Claudia. It worked. Friends would talk to me about my pieces, with no idea I had done them.

People think graffiti looks easy, but it’s a hard craft. After a decade of practice, I had mastered the spray can and was totally unrestricted.

I was invited to Hong Kong by an art collector who wanted me to paint in his new restaurant. I was sitting on his terrace, looking over the city, and he asked me: ‘What’s wrong? You don’t look happy.’ I realised that even though I’d gained respect from the graffiti world, I was asking myself: ‘What now?’.

Though it doesn’t feel like it, graffiti has a lot of guidelines. I was sticking to rules made by 13-year-olds living in New York in the 70s, but I wanted to do something that was more ‘me’. I hadn’t conformed growing up, so why would I let the rule book hold me back now?

Though my gender didn’t initially play a big part in wanting to succeed in the industry, as I grew up and realised how few female graffiti artists there were, it gave me a drive. Not feeling I needed to prove myself or hide my identity gave me freedom.

Now the world knew who I was, it was open to me and I knew I had to take the opportunity to capture the emotion in graffiti, stripping it back to energy and power, which hadn’t been done at the time. I ditched the outlines and spray can, and used brushes and watercolours to paint my letters.

The result was abstract, energetic, fresh and bright, and much more feminine — and I was fine with that. It’s ‘me’. There are endless possibilities to develop and it speaks to so many more people. I’m not boxed in any more.

FIND YOUR BALANCE

MadC’s DOs and DON’Ts on achieving your creative goals

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Back Yourself

Sometimes you have to make decisions about committing to something that may or may not work out, and you just have to dedicate yourself to it.

Find Out What Fires Your Creative Energy

No-one lacks creativity, we just block it. Discover what liberates you from social expectations, so you can take control of it.

Find Your Passion

I used to find it hard to concentrate on anything, but then I discovered painting. I can just get lost in what I’m doing and forget about time.

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Don’t Stick To One Path

You may have an end goal in mind, but know it might change. If you don’t feel happy or satisfied with what you’ve accomplished, keep striving until you do.

Don’t Be Held Back By Gender ‘Norms’

There’s no reason why, just because something has been a certain way for a long time, it should stay like that. Things change and industries need to move with the times.

Don’t Live In Your Comfort Zone

Whether it’s to incite creativity or to ensure you live life to the full, push yourself to leave your comfort zones as that’s when you’ll grow.

MadC is working with Rituals new limited edition collection, Express Your Soul.