“FEMINA MANTRA” has been following me for decades, and I still come back to it. It works like a source to my identity as a woman, but also like a straw to our collective experiences.
According to Carl Gustav Jung we all have access to the collective unconscious. Humans experience five main types of instinct: hunger, sexuality, activity, reflection, and creativity.
I am thinking of the little prehistoric figurines, and of carvings patiently cut into stones. We do not know their message, but to me it means that our ancestors believed in the visual language, in the power of the drawing and the sculpture. Today we use visual messages to all kind of information, but do we really deeply connect to visual expressions?
I wonder why the most important part of life, giving birth, is neglected in todays art. We find pictures of the sexual act, but giving birth is ignored. Do really “mankind” regard birth as a female thing, not worth focusing on?
Strong feelings and life changing experiences in an intimate format.
The series below were done in a periode of my life when I was ill, and could not get on my feet working with art as I used to. Two years before I had given birth to our youngest son, and this existential transcendence was so strong in me, it had to be expressed. I started this series of small scale linocuts, “inked them up” with my fingertips. They are my reference to the most important happenings in my life, giving birth to our sons.
