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Monika
Steinhoff |
Artist’s
Statement
Monika Steinhoff
Pre-Millennium
- humor and entertainment were the ‘safe’ ways to make a point, hide the
power, guilt and/or pain behind laughter.Now
in the year 2001, a different response is needed:artists
taking back their power, being the visionaries they were through the ages,
leaders ahead of their time, visualizing, portraying, imagining.With
no apologies to all who subordinate art to ‘business’ ---to the bottom
line, (to say nothing of sacrificing it to greed,) I openly re-establish
truth and beauty as the primary values in my paintings.Supported
by a metaphor from the ancient system of astrology(having
worked with it professionally for a number of years), it gives perspective
to our time by reflecting universal rhythms.I
celebrate the Pluto, Venus, Mars grand trine, bringing the god of transformation
and rebirth(Pluto) with a burst
of energy (Mars) through beauty (Venus) into my paintings.
Never
a follower of art trends, now in my 60th year on our planet and my 30th
as a painter, my internal vision has grown through a lot of experience
and observation of the human condition. While hardly starving, I have struggled
through long periods, seemingly unnoticed and un-rewarded, and yet always
rediscovering the exhilaration of exploring and pushing the boundaries
of the Unknown. The events of the previous two years, first looking toward
the Millennium through society’s fears and hopes, to the present moment
of 2001:the intensifying concerns
with global warming and it’s symptoms:draught,
fires and floods (the floods washing up our collective sins, like the nuclear
garbage dumped in the canyons all around Los Alamos), as well as the ever
increasingly disturbing awareness of the ineptitude, corruption and greed
backed national leadership, find their way into my work. The grand trine
in fire is a metaphor for paintings that mirror the externalization of
that transformative energy (draught, fire and flood) on our planet.
I have asked myself:how
can a conscious person ‘do’ art today, make another ‘product’ for the ‘consuming’
public when the earth is being choked with the production and use of products?Is
our civilization doing itself and all others in so there will be no tomorrow
(to say nothing of hundreds of years that the paintings I craft are meant
to last- an egocentric perspective certainly, used only to show one small
personal example of the absurd in our time.)Perhaps
this ‘doomsday’ perception, this hyper-vigilance, arises from my being
born when a nation was being destroyed all around me for its’ illusions,
hubris and evil.Having witnessed
and experienced it once, faced death and the destruction of a whole society,
I can too easily see it happening again, though in a very different form.Sometimes
working in my studio day after day, I wonder if I am like Nero playing
his violin as Rome burned?
I
embrace my destiny - a tulip given the right conditions will bloom in the
spring, even if the world ends the next day - I am an observer and visual
recorder, transmitter of imagery that goes from the surface (entertainment
- still the easiest access to the human heart and spirit) to the darkest
depths of the human experience, freeing myself from the tyranny of antiquated
belief systems that do not reflect Truth or reality. Art is an instrument
of Truth, helping in the evolution of consciousness, confidence and hope.
Painting is my main way of protesting the contradictions, illusions, even
evils of our present culture and celebrating it’s virtues and the joys
of living, with subtlety, humor and beauty. No apologies!
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