Meinrad Craighead

Meinrad Craighead (1936–2019) was an artist, scholar, and visionary, influential in the field of woman-centered religious art. Her work explores the human relationship to the Divine, particularly feminine images of God.
Early life and education.
Meinrad Craighead was born Charlene Marie Craighead in 1936 in North Little Rock, Arkansas, one of three daughters in a Catholic family. She discovered her love of art when her father gifted her drawing charcoal. She experienced her first "real religious experience" at the age of seven during an experience in nature with her dog.
Craighead was raised in Chicago, and attended Catholic school until she entered the University of Wisconsin, receiving a Master of Fine Arts in 1960.
Career.
Teaching in Albuquerque.
Craighead moved to the Southwest after graduating from the University of Wisconsin to accept a teaching job in the art department at the College of St. Joseph on the Rio Grande in Albuquerque. Here, she taught classes, began printing gesso relief prints, and explored Native American traditions in the Southwest.
Europe.
After two years at the College of St. Joseph, Craighead was invited to teach art in Florence, Italy. She spent 21 years in Europe, first teaching in Florence and then studying early medieval Catalonian art on a Fulbright Grant in Spain. While in Spain, she lived for ten months at Montserrat, a mountaintop monastery near Barcelona best known for its shrine to the Black Madonna. Soon thereafter, Craighead became a Benedictine nun at Stanbrook Abbey in England, where she made block prints, charcoal drawings, and began working with black ink on scratchboard. After fourteen years of monastic life, Craighead began working as an artist supported by the Arts Council of Great Britain.
New Mexico.
In 1983, Craighead returned to the United States to continue her artistic work, settling near the Rio Grande River in Albuquerque. She conducted workshops on the feminine divine across North American and Europe. In 2003, a retrospective of her work was published by Pomegranate Press, "Meinrad Craighead, Crow Mother and the Dog God." In 2009, a documentary entitled "Praying with Images" was made about Craighead and her work. She is featured in several books, including "Soul Sisters: The Five Sacred Qualities of a Woman's Soul." 
Publications.
In 2003, Pomegranate Press published "Crow Mother and the Dog God: A Retrospective," which is a compilation of Craighead's life's work.
Other published works by Meinrad Craighead include: