Lambrecht’s father was German and her mother, although born in Porto Alegre, went to a German school so Lambrecht grew up speaking German at home. In 1980, she went to Berlin in order to study at the Hochschule der Künste (HDK), now known as the Universität der Künste (UDK), where she was taught by artist, Raimund Girke and saw lectures by Joseph Beuys. While Beuys’s influence may relate to her use of natural pigments and the multi-dimensionality of her work, it is was time spent in Girke’s studio that was particularly inspiring for Lambrecht. From Girke she learnt to enjoy the meditative process of painting, his studio was calm, and he imparted the idea that painting was a process akin to calligraphy. His own work consisted of various analytical explorations of colour, specifically white, in which he saw himself as ‘writing’ the colour onto the canvas. While studying in West Berlin, Lambrecht remembers the strange process of crossing Checkpoint Charlie into East Berlin in order to visit both her grandparents and Wolf-Rehfeldt and Rehfeldt.

The shape of the cross is a motif that recurs throughout Lambrecht’s work, appearing both in the form of crucifixes and square crosses, which for Lambrecht are a sign of health and healing. There are religious elements in Lambrecht’s work, however she does not see herself as a religious person; she is interested in the poetic, human stories that are found in religious traditions and texts. Lambrecht extracts meaning from religious sources but chooses to discard the conventional, doctrinal associations. Thus, she occupies and explores a middle ground between the religious and the secular. 

Handwritten words play a significant part in Lambrecht’s paintings, fading in and out of her work. They are often isolated but are sometimes repeated, forming lists that are translated into different languages. The textual elements of her work serve as a source of additional meaning, they complicate and deepen her compositions. Having moved from Brazil to Broadstairs in the United Kingdom in 2017, Lambrecht begins to include English text in her work, alongside Portuguese and German words, in what appears to be a method of physical and psychological self-location and situation.

As Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro carefully observed in an interview with the artist, the potency of Lambrecht’s production is found in the conviction and clarity that it conveys despite exploring nebulous themes such as religion, time, language and the liminal space between humans and nature. Lambrecht’s work encourages viewers to engage with it spatially, chromatically and linguistically and in turn to consider how situate themselves in relation to their own environment.