I come from steel and glass country. Iron and quartz, bold strength and crystal clarity, the lifeblood that flows along the Allegheny River near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, built up my young body until I was three years old. My father worked in a steel factory. All of my Italian uncles and grandfathers labored in the factories on the banks of the Allegheny. My parents were very loving people, not at all intellectual. My mother and Nonna were both fabulous cooks and my uncles all played musical instruments. It seemed as if life revolved around the very lively family gatherings, usually outdoors or in the kitchen. The pasta, wine and mandolin music were plentiful. As a goldy-locked three-year-old, I sat on the bar at the Maffei Tavern and was fed formaggio from the volunteer firemen.

I was a quiet child.

I have always loved color. My earliest memories are of color: Our neighbor, silver haired Oogie's yellow kitchen with red trim. The dusty gray velvet seats of the train that carried me, sick to my stomach, and mother and brother to California. (Dad had hopped the train a few months ahead of us and found a job and a trailer.) Then, when I was five, on the way to Nonno Pete's funeral, the shock of stepping out of the plane with Mom, in the frosty Chicago Winter, still dressed for California, in my bright red corduroy jump suit, like a drop of blood in the glistening snow. When I was about six, our teenage neighbor, Donnie, let me try out his new boxing gloves, only once because his nose bled and his eye turned red and purple. At seven, I remember the yellow sunflower costume I wore for the first grade pageant, leafy green skirt and sunflower petal head dress, my golden curls dancing along with me and the swishing crepe paper. Later, on several family car trips across the states, from California to Pennsylvania, I would lie on the back seat gazing up, full of a deep peace and wonder, at the starry blue-violet sky. As far back as I can recollect, I have always loved color, especially magenta. When I was about twelve years old, my Mother sewed me a magenta dress, the color of a pinkish purple rose in our garden, the color of the bougainvillea bush that climbed up over the side wall of our house onto the roof, cascading down into the front yard.

I have always loved color.

My only brother was eight years older than I was. He and I were the only ones in our family who were very artistic, nobody before us had shown any interest in the arts. Where did it come from?

I have always been an artist.

As far back as I can recall, and even before that, I have always been an artist. I feel I might have lived in Italy during the Renaissance and sometime farther back, perhaps in ancient Greece. When I first walked barefoot on the warm rocks of Crete, I felt as if I had returned home after a long journey. Most amazing is the very special quality of light in Greece, especially the way in which the sunlight shines on the sea, painting the temples' columns with its warm, golden glow. There, the temple maidens first danced a kind of Eurythmic movement centuries ago. Still sounding throughout the amphitheater at Epidaurus, echo the early beginnings of the art of healing.

I have always been a healer.

My feet have led me back to these places, and into the future to meet my destiny by way of artistic Eurythmy, Therapeutic Eurythmy. I have taught pedagogical Eurythmy in Curative homes and Waldorf Schools, and performed with various stage groups in many countries. Through my worldwide work in Therapeutic Eurythmy, I have partaken in the most ancient, intimate and powerful art of healing. My life in Eurythmy developed out of my love for color and painting. At age 28, when I could take painting no farther, Eurythmy promised an infinite path, painting in the air with spiritual colors. The Eurythmy training transformed and released me in many ways, and gave me a fresh beginning to the art of painting. Later, in Camphill, I experienced first hand, Eurythmy's healing powers. Everywhere I have traveled, I have presented courses and workshops in painting, as well as selling and exhibiting my paintings in international galleries. In my workshops, I combine the arts of painting and artistic Eurythmy around the themes of the festivals and seasons of the year.

I have always been an artist.

It may well be that the boldness and strength in my work has been tinged by the South African landscape and wildlife, full of a primitive vitality, strong, brilliant sun and dynamic forces of nature. The subtle tones in my paintings may spring from the forests and mountains of Germany or the rolling green of England, where there lives much gentler expressions of nature and sunlight. America is rich with extremes and polarities: the deserts, the great mountain ranges, wide expanses of farmland, the weather from tropical to arctic, geysers, great canyons, mighty oceans, rivers, small towns and crowded cities. The sunlight and colors changing as often as the landscapes and people, they are as multifaceted as the wild animal kingdom, the birds and fishes. From Pacific to Atlantic coasts, from Canada to the Mexican border, variety and diversity live in America.

All this lives in me, but is it the origin of my art? Is this IT ? What of the flowing movement of the Eurythmy? What about all of those artists I have studied with, painted with, learned from, been influenced by? Is my work a homeopathic tincture of them all? Am I the sum total of the places I have visited? Am I a reflection of the people I have met? Is this what is expressed in my art? Or am I and my deeds something quite other?

The sun shines on all of these lands, and upon people of all colors, and upon all of my experience as a human being. More than anything, I would wish to become a SUN ARTIST, an artist who expresses those qualities and attributes of life, light, and warmth that spring from the life-giving planet itself, the SUN, flowing down to the planet EARTH, where we have our home, where love may, for a few brief moments, truly live.

Bonnie Maffei
Studio Sophia
1998