MOO – Monika Mori

In October 2014, I was asked if my painting Der Trauerflor der weißen Frau—the mourning veil of the white woman—might grace the back cover of ASHES AND SEEDS, a book by Michelle Greenblatt. A year later, on October 19, 2015, Michelle left this world.

Her choice touched me deeply. This painting, born of solitude and sorrow, seemed to speak directly to her. I believe Michelle recognized the hidden pulse within it—the quiet grief, the unspoken truth—and carried it into her own work. To be bound to her through ASHES AND SEEDS is not only an honor, but a reminder of how art can weave lives together across silence and absence.

ASHES AND SEEDS is available at Amazon and a video with Michelle can be viewed on YouTube.

From Jonathan Penton’s introduction

“This book is neither sermon nor lecture. It does not promise safety, nor reward for correct behavior. Instead, it insists on direct experience, on the raw honesty of suffering, and the fragile strength that may emerge from self-study. Michelle, in a truly confessional work, has chosen forms and symbols that most authentically tell the story of her vanishing girlhood. Through them, we may absorb a fragment of her journey—not to be comforted, but perhaps to be made stronger.”