Meinrad Craighead

Meinrad Craighead is a woman following the artist's path of Via Creativa - as described by Meister Eckhart - wherein the spiritual journey is an experience of birthing and creativity.

From the seeds of her personal mythology she births words and images that flow out from the richness of the manifest world. The "immanent Mother" - the source of all life - is perceived as a vigilant presence in all nature. Meinrad's images, springing from her own intimately personal vision, expand into a vastly conceived, all-embracing female divinity.

She explains: "The creative spirit I know within me has the face and the force of a woman. She is my Mother, my Mothergod, my Generatrix, the divine immanence I experience signified in all of creation."

Her creation-centered vision is rooted in the ultimate paradigm of creativity: birthing. She says, "The artist is always pregnant from within, a container of endless potential transformations, abandoned to the fertilizing powers of the imagination, actualizing unknown faces parthenogenetically... whether we are weaving tissue in the womb or weaving imagery in the soul, our work is sexual: the work of conception, gestation and birth."

Craighead's imagery is evoked from exquisitely etched childhood memories, from archetypal dreams, deeply felt life experiences and reflections. "I draw from my own myth of personal origin," she says, "and each picture is a realization of this story and is connected to the ancient images of the God Mother in art and mythology.

Both her writing and the paintings spring from the place of deep memory, personal and collective. "We are born remembering," she says, "We are born connected... every drawing is a quest for origin, a return to the source following the hidden threads in the labyrinthine matrix. Making is worshipping." -Patricia Reis

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