Presentation:
Cissie Hultberg,
Vägabo skola,
Se - 514 93 Ambjörnarp
Sweden
Tel. +46 325 - 661002
e-mail
About me
I was born in 1939 and live in Vagabo Schoolhouse near Ambjornarp in Sweden with my husband Bobby. We have six children and 11 grandchildren, and for 25 years of our lives we lived in East Africa, where I worked mostly with women and justice.
To paint is today a necessity for me. I started to teach myself to paint in acrylic, metaphorically, in the year 2000. My contact with painting was in connection with taking part in teaching a two-year psychotherapy education in Uganda. By painting I experienced an inner energy and started to paint full-time. The painting has changed my life. When I paint I feel a contact with something greater than myself, and the paintings come from inside me. My painting is driven by my feelings, coming from the experiences I have had in my eventful and sometimes difficult life. As well as in Africa and Sweden, I have painted in north-west Scotland, Vermont USA and northern Norway, where nature is fantastically beautiful, in colours which remind me of the parts of Africa where I have lived.
During my work with women living in hardship in Turkana in north-west Kenya, I started a course centre for women, together with four Turkana women. We taught leadership, how to run a business, marketing, bookkeeping and several activities to generate income. We also trained "barefoot lawyers", who helped women in trouble. After 20 years I left the project. It took all my time and had taken over my life. That was when I started to paint.
Inspiration for my painting comes from what I see and hear about what happens in the world, for instance 22 September, Jenin and the oppression of palestinians, the threat to our climate, the Swedish Song Contest, where breasts and sex are more important than the songs and voices - oppression in all its forms.
The expression and colours in my pictures are - and always will be - strongly influenced by my years in Africa, but also by my many journeys and experiences. I have seen mountain gorillas in the Virunga mountains, driven Landrover through Africa from Zambia to Sweden, and camped in most of the national parks in East Africa and at the Pyramids. I have travelled by train across Australia, seen whales in the sea outside Hermanus in South Africa and outside Boston, fished under the midnight sun in the sea at North Cape, Norway, and seen the cranes dance at Hornborga Lake in Sweden.
Welcome to my home page and to a journey in my inner landscape.
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