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ROSEMARIE HAUER
Writer/Artist
Links to Rosemarie’s works online:
Who are you?
Tell us a little bit about yourself and your interests
in general.
Who am I? That’s a
good question. I’m a school teacher (first to fourth grade) and mother of an
eleven-year-old girl. These two facts, not necessarily in that order of course,
absorb the most of my attention and creative energy which is fine for the most
part, because the results are very satisfying, but I do miss those times when I
was able to allow myself to get immersed in B&B to such a degree.
Both your art and your writing are among the best
beloved in the B&B fandom. What drew you to the Beauty and the Beast TV series, and why did you/do you feel the
need to write and draw about B&B? Was it something you had done before
being involved with Beauty and the Beast or something that developed out of it?
Of course I did draw a
little before B&B, but it’s hardly worth mentioning. What drew me to the
B&B TV series was the character of Vincent in the first place. I didn’t
know that in the beginning, but I do know now. It’s not so much that I ‘fell in
love with him’; it’s more that I identified myself with him so intensely.
In those first days of
watching B&B I dreamed about it several times. In one dream Vincent was a
dying child whom I covered with my clothing. In another dream Vincent and I
were children together, best friends who played in a forest. But in several
other dreams I was Vincent. I
experienced myself running up a hill, felt the cold air in my lungs as I was
panting with exhaustion, and the muscles of my thighs hurt as I pushed myself
to run even faster. Those dreams, which I still remember vividly after all
these years, indicated to me how deeply I felt connected to Vincent.
Who most influenced and/or encouraged
your talent? What training have you had for art as well as writing/literary
techniques, and where, if it was formal training - or are you self-taught,
working from instinct?
It was the character of Vincent who drove
me to draw him. When I saw the first pieces of art they took my breath away,
but it took quite a while before it occurred to me to take up the pencil
myself. I remember my first shaky drawing of a cloaked Vincent with flowing
hair who was walking through the tunnels. I remember thinking, ‘Wouldn’t it be
wonderful to have an entire folder full of Vincent drawings?’ I didn’t know
much about fandom back then, I’m not even sure if I had read my first fanzine
by that time. Now I have several folders full of B&B drawings and once a
year or so I take them down from the shelf and look through them, enjoying the
wealth of feelings that I put into them and that come back to me at those
moments.
I
didn’t have any special training, neither for art nor for writing, so I like to
say that Vincent was my teacher.
What do you enjoy more, the writing or the drawing?
Which do you find harder? More satisfying?
Writing is more
intense, makes me feel more engrossed and involved,
but it needs a form of concentration and focus that I can’t maintain at this
time of my life. Drawing is something you can interrupt and then continue at
another time. That’s why I still draw but don’t write anymore. All of my five
fanzines were written within three years while I was on maternity leave, but
I’ve been doing calendars since 1993.
Does your writing influence your art or does your art
influence your writing?
I have found myself writing something
inspired by a drawing, but never the other way around. That’s why I always
refused to illustrate other people’s stories. Fortunately some writers simply
accepted what I had to give and some even wrote scenes that matched a certain
drawing they liked.
Your art
Both your art and your fic are on line,
freely offered to the B&B fans. Let’s talk first of your art, a profusion
of that make the fans dream.
You often use pencil for your drawings. Tell us about
this favorite media.
Pencil is the simplest media both in
terms of getting naturalistic results and of being ready anytime. You can make
corrections and interrupt and resume your work as you need it. It’s different
with color media.
I started doing pen and
inks, though. For a long time I drew portraits consisting of millions of tiny
dots. I saw this with Beth Blighton’s and Barb
Gipson’s art and it fascinated me.
Other than pencil, you have used color media. Tell us
what they are, how you like using them, and how you choose whether to use
pencil or color media.
At first reading your question I found
myself thinking that I hadn’t used color media all that often, but now that I
think of it I realize that I have done
quite a lot of them by now, mainly oils and pastel drawings, but a few crayon
drawings and water colors, too.
How do you get such fine definition with a pencil -
the hair on Vincent’s face, etc. in such detail?
Frankly I don’t know
how to explain this. It just happens. I’m far from being professional, so I
can’t do it on command. I’ve found myself failing many times when I tried to do
a certain picture when the feeling wasn’t right.
How do you choose the subject of your
art? What inspires the composition of
the drawing, the choice of making a face portrait or a full body picture, the
positions of bodies… What do you imagine first - the
content of the work or the emotion you want it to convey? Tell us a bit about
all this.
As I said above, I’m
far from being professional. I just draw and the rest happens (or sometimes it
doesn’t happen). I do it all on instinct.
Do you ever end up with something
entirely different from what you started, or maybe a spin-off or two?
That’s impossible to
answer because I don’t have a result in mind when I start.
Do you create your B&B art from scratch, or find
inspiration in photographs, video scans and such? Or both?
I use photographs and
video scans, for without them it would be impossible for me to get naturalistic
results.
Is there a subject in the B&B
universe you especially love to draw, and something you especially find
difficult to draw? The many portraits of Vincent are telling of a special love
for him.
Well, you just answered
that question yourself J
An artist among the
Wintercandlemakers2 Committee says her husband’s build plays into her Vincent
drawings and wonders if yours does, too. If it does, how does he react to the
drawings?
Oh I used several
photographs of both my husband and my daughter. They both enjoyed it. No
complaints there. There is one portrait of Vincent and Amy (the baby-girl
character in my novella TWO OF A KIND) which I drew from a photograph of
Johanna and her daddy.
You illustrated several zines, working with many of
the best writers. How did you enjoy doing it, and how did you proceed to create
the art for those stories?
Illustrating zines,
well – doing drawings that got used in zines, to be correct, was the first
thing I did after encountering fandom and fan-fiction. It brought me in contact
with many lovely people whom I adored and admired. It was very, very precious
for me. Lynette Combs was the one who told me that she thought I would be
illustrating zines soon. I got her permission to translate one of her stories
into German, which was a hard job and quite an achievement, but worth the
effort. Sadly I don’t remember the title of that story, but I do remember how
deeply it touched me. I didn’t have a computer back then, so I can’t look it
up.
Several of the zines you illustrated are about Third
Season stories. Do you find a difference between creating art for the Classic
stories and the Third Season universe?
My first reaction was
to simply deny that Third Season existed, but then I met Jo Anderson twice,
once in
Tell us about the art you are working on at present,
if any.
At the moment I’m doing non B&B
related art like portraits of people I know. I have done several oils during
the years that grace the walls of our house; landscapes, seascapes, feathers
and wings. But I’m far from being as prolific as I used to be during my B&B
days. Still, art is my retreat, my
refuge, but most of the time I can’t manage to get there.
Your writing
After having produced a lot of both high
quality fic and stunning art in the past years, now you contribute to keep the
dream alive with lovely BATB pieces every year but have stopped writing. We would
like to know something about how you created that beautiful fic, though.
I remember my first attempts at
writing were writing down what I longed to see in the episodes. In German of
course. And very, very furtively. I had never heard about such a thing as fan
fiction. So my first access was writing after all. I had almost forgotten about
that. I quickly dropped it after having read the first real fan
stories, such as Sue Glasgow’s "Run
to the Sea". I can’t even begin to tell you how impressed I was. "There I Will Make Thee A Bed of
Roses" by Carole Whitehead was the first adult story I ever read, and
it was fairly innocent compared with many of those that were yet to come.
The
first story I wrote, if I remember it correctly, was a German story for a
German fanclub magazine. Later I translated it into
English and it appeared in my anthology "Magic",
entitled "A Happy New Year".
It’s a holiday season story and translating it was one hell of a job. From that
time on I simply wrote my stories in English right from the start.
You are Austrian. How does it happen that you wrote
your fic in English, and how can you master this language so well?
I have been asked this question several
times and I will give you the answer I always give: I learned it in the Tunnels.
I have got a mother tongue and a Vincent tongue. J
Do you have one or several
favorite situations, feelings, happy endings and/or developments in the
characters’ lives?
I have three favorite characters which I
created for my stories: Amy, a little baby girl who looks like Vincent and who
gets found by Catherine (“Two Of A Kind”);
Johannes, an old man who looks like Vincent and who is held captive by the
villains of that story and is finally found and set free by Vincent and
Catherine (“Thanks To The Human Heart”).
And finally there is Joshua, a different kind of ‘Devin’ (“Sunlight”). I’m in awe of the feeling of having created a
character. It’s almost as awe-inspiring as looking at your child. Almost, but still...
Do you have endings in mind for works in progress when
you start them or do you just let the stories go where they take you? Do you
always know what you want to achieve at the end?
My ideas for a story
are very rough. Basically it’s the same as with the pictures. As I said, I’m
far from being professional. I walk into a story and come out of it on the
other end, very much like reading a book or watching a film.
Where do you start on a story... beginning, end or
middle? Outline the story, start from an image, a word, an
individual section... have an idea that tugs at your mind and
practically writes itself... Or does it just depend on the story? What induces
you to write a “moment” or a more plot-oriented story?
I always start at the
beginning and write myself all the way through it. Of course I sometimes add or
omit parts and pieces, but I never have a plot when I begin.
What have been your sources of
inspiration? Do your stories ever include some of your own life experiences?
When
my daughter was several weeks old I found myself on a walk on a sunny winter’s
day – and suddenly there was the character of little Amy begging to come to
life.
So when my baby took her nap I sat down and wrote about that other baby and had
Catherine find her and go through similar situations with her. That’s just one
example – but that’s not the case with all of my stories of course. One curious thing was that I had Amy
pronounce Vincent’s name "Cent" when she started to speak. I wanted
to do something different, because I knew that most children use the first
syllable of a name when they start speaking. Well, take a guess how my daughter
did it when she started to say the name of our big, furry family member several
months later? Right, she called him Cent.
Have any of the characters you have
created in a story been a reflection of yourself or someone you know?
Joshua is a reflection
of Ron Perlman. And I was very pleased to find that people sensed that without
having seen the art that went with the story.
How often do the characters take off on their own once
you’ve started writing?
Always.
If you introduced especially painful developments,
were they a priority in order to make the story eventful, hook the reader...?
How did you feel about making the characters suffer - it would make them or their
determination stronger, eventually solve their problems...?
Suffering is never an
end in itself in my stories. It’s always there to get the character to a
progressed level. I like to think that’s not too far from the truth.
What research, if any, do you do for your stories?
None. I
draw on my experiences and have the characters do and say things that are not
too far away from myself. That’s probably why my
villains are ‘iffy’.
Do you have your stories edited and proofread? Do you
consider this important?
Oh yes!! I’ve had
several very precious proofreaders and I will be eternally grateful to them. I
gave them credit in my zines, so I won’t list them up here. I wouldn’t want for
any of them to slip my mind at the moment.
“After”
You, as well as the other guest authors we are
interviewing, have allowed your work to be posted online for the enjoyment of
all B&B fans. Why did you decide to do it, and how did you choose the
sites?
My stories and
pictures are on sites I like and where I have the feeling that I am among
friends.
What do you like to hear from someone reading your
story or looking at your art? What was
the most interesting response you’ve had to your work? What do you consider the
greatest compliment you’ve received?
Simply that they were touched or moved.
That’s the greatest compliment.
Which of your B&B
writings and art do you like best, and why? If you were forced to pick one
passage, scene or line from one of your stories, and one of your pieces of art,
as a favorite, what would they be?
All
of my stories are my ‘children’, but I think that “Heaven Breaking Through” contains the
most of myself.
Does artistic talent run in your family?
I’m not sure. There is
no one of my family left whom I could ask about it. But my daughter certainly
inherited both the love for writing and drawing. She started making books from
the moment she could hold a pencil and copy her first letters. It has been a
constant source of joy and fascination to watch her progress.
Any advice you would give to beginners?
Make
the best use of everything that gives you enthusiasm. Enthusiasm gives you the
spirit, the strength and eventually the skills to make dreams come true.
Who are some other B&B
authors who might inspire you or whose work you particularly enjoy? Is there another
artist’s or writer’s work that you especially like – any particular story or
art piece?
There are truly many, many of them, too many to pick a particular
artist or writer at this moment. It’s easier with artists, though, because
their work and their style is connected more closely to their names. Beth
Blighton, Barb Gipson and Renate Haller are certainly the artists I learned the
most from. (Renate, where would Vincent’s hair be without you?!) I’m a great
admirer of P.S. Nim’s graphic novels, although I never tried my hand on that
style. (Well, it’s exactly the direction my daughter chose for herself.) Where
color art is concerned it’s Clare Sieffert who inspired me to dig up my oil
paints and explore other color media like pastels, acrylic paints and water
colors.
You continue to produce lovely BATB
pieces every year. Can we assume your love of the show is still in your heart?
Oh yes, no doubt about
that!
Tell us about your B&B calendars,
sources for ordering, and if you are currently producing anything else.
All of my B&B
calendars are still available. I have a new one out for 2005 and it can be
ordered from me directly. Just feel free to contact me via e-mail anytime.
How did B&B affect your life?
In every way you can
think of. If you have read what I have written so far, you know a lot about it
already. It is wonderful to see those changes in other people as well, to see
them grow more self confident, more caring
and more open. I hope
people who know me have recognized changes like that in me as well.
Are you or have you been involved with any other
fandoms in the same way?
Never.
Do you write and draw in any other fandoms besides
B&B?
No, I don’t.
Do you want to say anything else to the
readers of this interview about yourself, B&B, the writing, the art, or the
fandom?
This fandom is very
special. It consists of very special people who share a very special dream of a
better world, one in which someone like Vincent is loved and accepted and even
admired. I am very grateful for everything that has come to me out of this
series and this fandom. My heart is still there and I hope and pray that there
will always this place of warmth and friendship where we can go to when we need
it.
Winterfest Online, January 2005