Måna Lagerholm was born in 1946 and grew up on an island in the south of Sweden. Her father was a teacher by profession, but also painted and made furniture. M?na had creative impulses even when she was quite young, often spending time drawing pictures. She became a very independent and rather unconventional person in her teens, preferring to make her own clothes and bleaching her hair white.
After her marriage, Måna went to live with her husband in his native England. She went to Falmouth College of Art in Cornwall, initially to study sculpture. But, as the school was a very free, loosely structured place, she was able to work with a variety of media. Painting, instead of sculpture, became her primary interest, and she did advanced work in order to receive her teaching credentials. But, teaching interfered with the pursuit of her work, and so she gave it up.
Måna was an admirer of Chagall, Bonnard, Matisse, Kahlo, Hockney and others, but her work is solely a product of her highly original artistic sensibilities. Her daughter, Lina, says, ?People would always ask what the world was that she painted, but the truth was that it wasn?t one she had intentionally created, but one that came out when she painted, from somewhere deep within.?