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Thank you!

Thank you so much for donating to keep this site going.  With your help, we can now keep it online for at least another year.

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Donations

This website has no source of income and I have maintained it since Monica’s death in 2005, and intend to continue for as long as I possibly can.

There are, of course, costs involved which so far I have met from my own pocket.  This is now becoming more difficult and if you enjoy having this resource available on the web then please consider a small donation.  The box below suggests £5.00 but the minimum is £2.50 because of PayPal costs.  Do feel free, of course, to give more!

Whether you can help or not – thank you for visiting.

Geraldine Charles

Extras

We have gleaned a few more items over the years – please see the new menu titled “Extras” to the right of the page to visit …

Welcome!

The original Monica Sjöö Retrospective was held at the Hotbath Gallery, Bath, from 28 January to 25 February 2004. It was an amazing experience to visit this exhibition; I wanted to sit in the middle of the space and soak in all the colour, meaning and beauty for a long, long time.

I still remember the day back in the 1960s when, sitting in Father’s (forbidden) chair, reading his despised newspaper, I came across a shock-horror description of the painting God Giving Birth. It changed my life. I was about sixteen years old and had never considered the idea of God as anything other than male, white and bearded.

This website cannot in any way match seeing an exhibition in the flesh – how I wish I could devise a way to let you sit in the middle of such riches! – but we hope to offer a glimpse of the variety and beauty of Monica’s work.

To navigate the exhibition, use the “next” and “previous” links at the top and bottom of each page. You will find that most images will, if clicked on, show you a larger version. From a larger image simply click on the “return” link below the image.

Geraldine Charles
February 2005

Introduction

Monica Sjöö, the great artist whose work is timeless, has presented us with images of ancestors and of the ancient world that nourish and sustain. Searching from within her own heart out into the heart of nature and of memory, sitting with the ruins and that which has been paved over, peering into the abyss and holy well, she has created masterpiece after masterpiece of the human and female soul. Her work is astonishing. Arresting. So moving that, usually, one finds, upon examining it, no need of speech. It has a completeness, in that sense, that much art lacks. We stand before her canvases, often quite large, as before a field of yellow sunflowers or green corn, or the sea.

I think it is because she is painting that which has been silenced, hidden, almost thoroughly. I believe many of the images she reintroduces to us were meant never to appear before female eyes again. It is as if she is reintroducing us to our lost passions. Passions about the earth, about nature, about true worship, about our own strength and power in the face of the mystery that we, as humans and women, inhabit.

Her gift to us is measureless as is her integrity and implacable dedication to the tending of earth and the psychic health of awakening human beings.

Alice Walker
Writer/Poet/Artist
November 2003