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Artist Statement:
Catherine Rogers Jonsson is
artistically and esthetically
influenced by the work of
Richter, Kandinsky, Munch,
Redon and Schiele and the
philosophy/theology of
Nietzsche and Swedenborg.
For more detailed information
go to her official website at
http://www.catherinerogersjonss
on.com
In addition to her work in
visual art she also offers Art
Therapy consultations and
workshops in Northern Europe
and the USA.
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Further Information
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Artist Exhibitions:
Coming Soon!
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Artist Galleries:
Coming Soon!
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Artist Reviews:
Coming Soon!
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Collections:
Coming Soon!
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Commissions:
Coming Soon!
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Catherine Rogers Jonsson Biography:
| Biographical information for Catherine Rogers Jonsson can be found below. The artist may choose what information to display. Sometimes the artist chooses not to display personal information to the general public. |
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Age
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53
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| Gender |
Female
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| Status |
Married
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| Children |
1
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| Religion |
not provided |
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| Education |
Masters of Fine Arts |
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| Hobbies / Interests |
not provided |
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| Favorite Artistic Medium |
Painting Oil
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| Favorite Arthistory Movement |
Expressionism - (1905 - 1945)
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| Favorite Visual Artist |
Gerhardt Richter
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| Favorite Work of Art |
not provided
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| Biggest Artistic Inspiration |
not provided |
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| Why Did You Become An Artist |
A Short Autobiography: Catherine Rogers Jonsson
I was born in 1955 in Memphis, Tennessee, U.S.A., however I grew up in a suburban town outside of Boston, Massachusetts. As a child of seven I can remember thinking to myself that I will always be an artist. It was one of the three true joys I had in life. The other two joys were reading (fiction and nonfiction)and listening to music(everything from Pop to opera). These joys hold true today.
In high school I had the opportunity to attend the Boston Museum School’s art classes for young artists. I was taught how to create life size portraits in clay, how to cast them in plaster, how to draw in a very academic fashion from the Greek and Roman sculpture rooms of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
I went to college in the mid-west and began studying both art and philosophy with equal enthusiasm. I realized that as much as I loved studying philosophy, I needed to create objects and pictures still more. Throughout the years my studies in philosophy have enormously contributed to the wealth of ideas and feelings in my art. In fact, I express my own unique philosophy of life through my art to such an extent that the two are inseparable.
After four years of college I was invited to study fine arts at Columbia University’s School of the Arts in New York City. Naturally I was greatly impacted by the New York art scene and the cast of characters who made up the art world at that time. The atmosphere was one of excitement, of living life on the razor’s edge. I embraced New York City with all its’ good and evil. As a student I worked with a number of famous artists who visited The School of the Arts…. Carl Andre, John Chamberlain, Hannah Wilke, Claes Oldenberg, Richard Artschwager, Clement Meadmore, Louise Bourgeois, and many other artists. I studied with dynamic professors at Columbia in both the art and philosophy departments. They taught me about how to see and think about art in philosophical and psychodynamic ways.
After graduation I took a teaching position in a place about 6,000 miles away from New York City. It was an incredible adventure to live in Fairbanks, Alaska for over 10 years. I taught sculpture and drawing at the University of Alaska while at the same time learning so much myself about life from my students, colleages and friends in Alaska. The greatest lessons I learned on living peacefully on the Earth were from the Athabaskan Indians and the Eskimo people. I believe the Alaskan way of life is just about as different from life in New York City as two places can be. It was in Alaska that I began asking very serious questions about myself, my life, and where I fit into the universe. I began to see art as a tool for expressing anything I could feel in my heart and any concept I could think in my mind.
On that basis, art became infinitely more than a decoration for a wall, table, and floor. Art became the blood of existence. The creation of art became as mysterious as the creation of the universe. When my son Benjamin was born, I felt him to be the most precious and mysterious work of art that I would ever create.
I began teaching art to troubled high school students in a prison, volunteering once a week to come to the jail. The pain they expressed in their art…. the horror of their lives, the suffering they endured, the unexpected pockets of joy they had……absolutely amazed me. My work at the prison inspired me to go into art therapy and become a professional art therapist.
I have stories of the emotional journeys of these fine, sad and brave people that would more than fill a book and make one’s eyes fill with tears. At one psychiatric hospital in the Chicago area I worked with more than 300 emotionally and behaviorally disturbed children under the age of 12. I think of them as beautiful, suffering, golden spirits. I learned profound life lessons about what happens when people abuse each other and themselves in an effort to survive in this world. No matter how skilled and well-defended one becomes as a therapist there is still a measure of the patient’s pain we carry with us.
That pain is ever present in my work today.
After moving to Lidköping Sweden in 1998, the main focus of my life has been in painting and drawing the human condition: joy, pain, growth, sorrow, blessings, luck, death, rebirth.
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| Your Personal Biography |
Catherine Rogers Jonsson was art educated in Boston, New York City and Europe. She has had numerous solo and group exhibitions over the past twenty years in the United States.
Catherine’s art works contain both spiritual and mythological themes. She often works on large scale canvas with life sized and larger than life sized human figures in dynamically energized environments. .
Catherine lives and works in the countryside outside of Lidköping.
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