the shop it was bringing up children and doing household chores. The son Jatte remembers his father as “the kindest in the world” and his mother as an expert at working, picking berries, fishing, lace making and quilting. She could find happiness in fishing for grayling with an otter board on the river or picking berries to sell. till försäljning harr She often worried about how they would make ends meet; but she found peace in handicraft and later painting. There was no time or opportunity for going to art events, or to participate herself. The nearest thing was when Sonja often “doodled” in the margin when she was taking shopping orders on the telephone. They ran the village shop for many years but it was sold at the end of the 1960s when Sigurd had health problems, and as pensioners they went to live in Piteå. Sonja, who was used to being busy, applied to a porcelain painting course. She did not paint the standard decorations, but painted pictures from memory. Jatte thought she should paint pictures instead, and he helped her get artist’s material konstnärsmaterial. He put up a canvas for her and she began painting. Before long, Sonja had painted several canvases and was exhibiting on a small scale. Together with her sons Jan Anders and Larserik, Sonja also had an exhibition in Södertälje, where her paintings attracted a good deal of attention. She had many memories, and the paintings became many too. It was important to depict and tell, this was in true naïvist spirit, where traditional rules were of subordinate significance. Whether it was outdoor scenes or interiors, with or without people, there is a wealth of detail and often objects depicted from the angle that makes them easiest to see. She certainly asked Jatte for advice regarding perspective on one occasion, to be able to paint a house correctly, but he thought she should put that aside, and so it was. The motives can be settings with houses, animals and people from the village past, but also different events: when the steamship came to the village, a funeral, a prayer meeting, cour-
ting couples etc. One recurring motif is her childhood home – when it was demolished, Sonja felt bitterness, but the farm lived on in her paintings. In general they are pictures that give a positive and affirmative impression. Whether S onja consciously chose pleasant memories or whether the dark ones had been repressed, that is another story. Sonja’s paintings are not merely experience art, but also chronicles of times past. Perhaps it was thanks to the spirit of the age, with increased interest in folk art and naïvistic art that an art connoisseur and gallery owner invested in Sonja’s art. Sonja’s depictions of Norrbotten were now exhibited in Stockholm and Paris and she featured in the national media. One of her paintings, a horse contest race outside a wintry Norrbotten farm, became the motif on the post office Christmas telegram, Julpostogram. She was happy and pleased with the attention, and gladly attended exhibition openings and chatted with visitors. She also painted an exhibition opening in one painting where her own paintings are shown in miniature, with visitors in the room. After her husband’s death, Sonja moved to the Church Town in Gammelstad. Even though she did not like the setting so much, she now used the church cottages as motifs. Due to an accident she spent her last days in a home for the elderly, and died just before her 90th birthday. Sonja Eriksson became an established artist late in life, and she sometimes wondered how things would have turned out if she had been able to have an art education like her two sons.