Meinrad Craighead

Meinrad Craighead (February 12, 1936 – April 8, 2019) was an American artist, writer, and visionary. Her work explores feminine faces of the divine, mystical experiences, and the sacredness of the natural world.

Early life and education Meinrad Craighead was born Charlene Marie Craighead on February 12, 1936, in North Little Rock, Arkansas. The daughter of Marie Catherine Engster and Charles O'Connor Craighead Jr., she was the eldest of three girls in a Catholic family. Craighead's family moved to Houston, Texas a few years after her birth. She "led a deeply intuitive life from an early age"

Craighead's father moved to Chicago to seek work when she was eight years old. Craighead, her mother, and her sisters moved back to North Little Rock for a few years before joining her father in Chicago. From 1954 to 1958, Craighead attended Clarke College, a small, Catholic women's college in Dubuque, Iowa, where she earned her bachelor's degree. In 1956 she spent her junior year in Vienna, through Clarke College's Institute of European Studies, to attend drawing classes. She stopped to pray in the Karlskirche, where she happened to find a pamphlet with a photo of Bruder Meinrad Eügster, her maternal great-great uncle. Brother Meinrad had been a monk at the Benedictine monastery of Einsiedeln in Switzerland and was regarded for his humility and holiness. This discovery represented a pivotal moment for Craighead, who "knew [she] had to visit the monastery where he had lived" and became curious about the Black Madonna associated with Einsiedeln. In New Mexico, Craighead "found the land that matched [her] interior landscape." Craighead prayed to the Black Madonna daily and began creating large charcoal drawings of the Black Madonna while looking out over the landscape and wildlife at Montserrat.

In 1975, Craighead's mother died.

Artistic process Craighead approached creating art as a spiritual endeavor and sacred practice through which to explore the unknown. She wrote, spoke and lectured on the connections between her own experiences, her art, and her spirituality. At workshops and retreats in Europe and the United States, Craighead invited participants into the creation of rituals and incorporation of spiritual practices into their daily lives. She asserted the importance of altars in her life and emphasized the interconnectedness of the material and spiritual realms.

In the publisher's note to Meinrad Craighead: Crow Mother and the Dog God: A Retrospective, Zoe Katherine Burke writes that Craighead's paintings "deliver us to thresholds and dare us to cross them, to see differently, to expand our vision of what's possible, to become humble in the face of our earthliness, to feel immeasurably blessed and empowered by the presence of animals in our lives, to trust in and respect the mystery of the unknown."

Craighead left her unsold work and copyright to Amy Dosser who manages the Meinrad Craighead website, where videos and lectures are made available to the public. In 2009, the Resource Center for Women and Ministry in the South and Minnow Media published the documentary Meinrad Craighead: Praying with Images.

Craighead's published works include:

The Mother's Birds: Images for a Death and a Birth. Worcester, England: Stanbrook Abbey Press, 1976. The Sign of the Tree: Meditations in Images and Words. London: Artists House, 1979. "Immanent Mother." in The Feminist Mystic, and Other Essays on Women and Spirituality. Mary E. Giles. New York: Crossroad, 1982. The Mother's Songs: Images of God the Mother. New York: Paulist Press, 1986. Liturgical Art, Kansas City, MO: Sheed & Ward, 1988. The Litany of the Great River. New York: Paulist Press, 1991. Meinrad Craighead is featured in the following publications:

Swann, Donald. The Rope of Love: Around the Earth in Song. Bodley Head Children's Books, 1973. Illustrated by Meinrad Craighead. The Sunday Missal. Edited by Harold Winstone. London: Collins Liturgical Publications, 1975. Illustrated by Meinrad Craighead. The Weekday Missal. Edited by Harold Winstone. London: Collins Liturgical Publications, 1975. Illustrated by Meinrad Craighead. Winter, Miriam Therese. WomanWord: Women of the New Testament. New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1990. Illustrated by Meinrad Craighead. Winter, Miriam Therese. WomanWisdom: Women of the Hebrew Scriptures, Part One. New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1991. Illustrated by Meinrad Craighead. Winter, Miriam Therese. WomanWitness: Women of the Hebrew Scriptures, Part Two. New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1992. Illustrated by Meinrad Craighead. Ayo, Nicholas. Sacred Marriage: The Wisdom of the Song of Songs. Continuum, 1997. Illustrated by Meinrad Craighead. "Nel Giardino Segreto di Meinrad Craighead." ("In the Secret Garden of Meinrad Craighead.") A one-hour documentary, one episode of Il Filo d'Oro, 1998. Meinrad Craighead: Crow Mother and the Dog God: A Retrospective. Petaluma, CA: Pomegranate Communications, Inc., 2003.