Based in London, German painter Sophie von Hellermann finds inspiration in literature, history, myth and popular culture. Her artistic influences include the Romantic painters, J.M.W. Turner and Francisco Goya, and German Expressionists, Ernst Kirchner, Otto Müller, and Edvard Munch. Hellerman's emotive, swirling compositions often feature pastel palettes, but dark political narratives can lurk beneath the light surfaces. Upon completion of her BFA in Düsseldorf in the mid-1990's, von Hellermann and a group of friends founded the "Hobbypop" artists' collective, which focused on multi-media installations satirizing contemporaneous events. Hellermann entered the prestigious Royal College of Art in London in 1999, and began to organize group shows in order to showcase her work and that of her classmates.

Von Hellermann once said, "What interests me is how the mind works and how dream images come together from things you've seen, read, and experienced both years ago and yesterday."[1] Much like the quickly dissolving traces of a dream, Sophie von Hellermann's paintings evoke the elusive feeling of a moment slipping through the mind's grasp. This semi-figurative painting, The Explosion, transpires on untreated canvas with loose brushwork and acrylic stains that appear freshly applied with a large brush. Hellermann paints quickly and frequently mixes and dilutes acrylic pigments to create the effect of watercolor. A maelstrom of muted grays, yellows and blues characterize The Explosion, which is based on a 1992 meta-fictional novel titled Leviathan by Paul Auster. The novel's circuitous and mysterious plot involves two writers who become entangled in a love triangle that ultimately leads to self-destruction, murder, urban terrorism and an FBI investigation. The novel opens with a description of a man being blown up on the side of the road in Wisconsin, his body shattered into small pieces thrown far from the site of the explosion. Von Hellermann's painting captures that moment with a centrally located explosion, a truncated road on the left and figures, household structures and a smoke-enveloped American flag on the right.