Walking Home: The Life and Art of Monika Steinhoff

The artist Monika Steinhoff was born into a turbulent time. The Second World War was well under way and her birthplace was not only at its center but the center of the center: Swinemde, on the island of Usedom in northern Germany, where her father was one of the leaders of the development and production of the weapon that was designed to win the war for Germany, the V2 missile at the nearby Peenemde facility. This plan of course did not succeed, and subsequently many of the scientists were brought to the United States under the program entitled Operation Paperclip. Thus, Monika grew up in Alamogordo, New Mexico, famous (or infamous) for the detonation of the first atomic bomb, along with the other children of the German scientists.

But it wasn't the bomb that drew her back to New Mexico after her college days. It was northern New Mexico's reputation as an art center and its mysticism of landscape and spiritual practice, particularly Kundalini Yoga. The northern New Mexico background began to appear unbidden as she began her series of paintings called "Journey of the Fool," poetic, dream-like narrative paintings in egg tempera. The female fool, or jester, often nude but with a red fool's cap, brought up deeply buried experiences to consciousness through the painting process. After the events of September 11, 2001, her vision turned from the personal to the greater social/political arena through the series "Collective Folly" with paintings such as "Ritual of the Unlimited," " ..and God gave Dominion," "4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse over Bagdad," whose four horsemen are known to all familiar with past and recent history, "Restoring the Balance" and "Rapture Anyone?" She has always explored the relationship between beauty and Truth.