Charl Vinz started his career in illustration by singing an Edith Piaf song in Luxembourg in front of a residential care home, during lockdown. Having taken advantage of this suspended time to work on his drawing – which had always been his regular pastime– his first ‘official commission’ came from an accordionist friend who generously organised concerts in front of retirement homes. Charl wasn’t aware of it at the time, but this event launched his career! His drawing was a hit, and the commissions starting coming in. Charl says he draws from observation, and it’s while he’s out and about in the city that he looks for ideas. That’s because he loves observing buildings in the city and incorporating them into his world. A big fan of the precision of architectural sketches, he loves the meticulousness required for the details of a façade or the depth of a perspective. He loves mixing moods and also uses photos he finds in magazines to design his images. A devotee of the Renaissance era, he has little inclination to use digital tools, preferring pencils, pens, and even penknives to sculpt the material when he does linocuts. And it’s precisely by linocut printing large red solid backgrounds that this lover of black and white and simple lines has managed to introduce colour into his compositions.

In the European capital of Luxembourg that Charl Linz is drawing, it’s the future that’s being invented with a fluid, highly-connected public transport network (free throughout the country), enabling all nationalities to get together to work or chat over a good Luxembourg beer. The notion of work-life balance is an essential element.