Part I

Retrospective of 40 to 50 years:  The reason for the variable is this:  50 years ago while a student in the PhD Literature program at UC Berkeley I finely (after long years of debate!) made up my mind to be an artist.  I had done a series of water colors from a trip to White Sands, put them up in my meditation closet,  looked at them altogether a few days later, and discovered:  I am an artist!    And from then on my path was clear and certain.  While still in the PhD program I pursued pottery, sculpture and batik.   40 years ago in Santa Fe I renewed that commitment, I was newly married and we had a son of 1 year old, and my art career took on it's next phase: one year of watercolors, one year of etchings and  the third year I began interiors of Santa Fe, restaurants, cafe's,  hotels, Indian Market etc. and even a series of the Balloon Fiesta.
After my 1st retrospective at St. John's college, inspired by a long somewhat disconcerting discussion with a an art critic working for the New Mexican, I began my series:  Journey of the Fool and changed from oil to egg tempera.right in the middle of a Master Class with Henriette Wyeth-Hurd, totally in a different direction from what she and her son Michael were teaching, uninspired by their more concrete almost scientific approach, I was catapulted into my fertile imagination.   Many woman artists feel they must devote themselves totally to art giving up motherhood and family to "get ahead" -    I felt different, all of life experiences are material for my paintings.  Being pregnant and having a child was an unforgettable experience and grist for  art.    My husband and I both having had some deeply traumatic childhood experiences, reached out to 3 other children through adoption, enriching ours and their experience.   And while my painting time became more limited, my concentration and discipline were deep and steady.was .  (next part while contain images as well.)

NMHU Painter's Exhibition at Kennedy Hall

A SEA Gallery artist, Monika Steinhoff will have three  pieces featured in the upcoming 6th Annual Painter's Exhibition at New Mexico Highlands University, from September 8th though October 31st of this year.   The first painting, "Early Meltdown "  was inspired by a trip to Alaska where her oldest son was starting  school at the University of Alaska, but wanted to snowboard at Valdez on his way. 
Steinhoff states:  "I love cross country skiing and took advantage of my time while my son pursued his favorite sport.  It was late January '97.    The foggy atmosphere and unusual warmth was both  magical and disturbingly dreamlike.    I skiied straight ahead (according to my compass)  mesmerized by the pools around the trees which mirrored small rainbows, to find myself facing a building that looked exactly like what I had left an hour earlier. How odd I thought.  It took me a few moments to realize i had skiied in a circle!    Later that year as I worked on this painting, I felt it was a clear sign of 'Global Warmng.' "

Early Meltdown

Head Above Water

Interrogation

Geier's show 6-21 to 7-23 2019

Yaa!  We are back in!      Now we are getting ready for a show of Friedrich Geier's new work,  (it is  brighter, more vibrant even than before). 

Opening on June 21, Friday 5 - 7 pm, and a gallery artist talk on Saturday between 3 & 5, discussing Geier's work and methodology.  How much planning drawing, revision does an artist do,  how much is intuitive trusting what comes through ones  psyche?  etc.    Refreshments will be served both days. 

A SEA Gallery was closed for 2 weeks due to my trip to Germany to be present at the Easter week subsitute Opening as we were unable to attend the original Opening of February 15th, 2019 due to a family emergancy.    Here are some of the paintings installed for one year at the Culturelles Historisches   Museum in Peenemuende where the V 2 Rocket was developed prior and during WW II.  Part I  of the show was the installation of  my Bronze of Werner Von Braun, commisioned by my father Dr. Ernst A. Steinhoff, in 3 editions (the first in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington  DC, the 2nd at the Von Braun House at White Sands Proving Grounds, NM).  As I understand fully that this period of German history is not popular, as Dr. Philipp Aumann, Musuem Director and Curator of the show, expressed to me, we agreed to exhibit my anti-war paintings along with the bronze.    As a student and graduate student at UCLA  and U C Berkeley in the PhD program in German Literature, I studied the Holocaust, WWI & II through it's Literature and also looked deeply at my own family history and experience of WW II (our family was bombed 13 times and I almost died from contacting Diptheria, Scarlet Fever and Whooping Cough) and our subsequent move to the USA through "Operation Paperclip"   without the adults, especially the scientists ever processing their role in being co-opted to support Hitler's war.  As an adult I became convinced there should have been some sort of  (not just "debriefing"   but moral examination and review of the Nazi conditioning that the families never totally lost and left deep scars in  psyches of parents and their off-spring of which i am one.  Once back in New Mexico to dedicate myself full time to being a painter a way of also processing and being witness to my life's  and present experiences, --- confronted by the existence in Los Alamos  of the Bomb,  [ the continuance of Von Braun's  and my fathers legacy (though they had turned long before to peacetime service to  society]  it's symbol, the Missile.