fyrir bragðið tók ég vel eftir umhverfinu, lifði allur í landslaginu ef svo má segja, þekkti hvern hól og hverja þústu.“ (bls.69) Sigurður, sem fæddur er árið 1916, er af merkri ætt gáfu- og athafnamanna úr Skagafirði, sonur Sigurðar Sigurðssonar sýslumanns á Sauðárkróki, Stefáns- sonar, alþingismanns og prests í Vigur. MóðirSigurðar var Stefanía Arnórsdóttir prests Árnasonar í Hvammi í Laxárdal. Á æskuheimili Sigurðar var ekki myndlist fyrir að fara, fremur en á öðrum heimilum úti á landi á þeim tíma, en þeim mun meiri „hneigð til fræða, kveðskapar og annarra lista en myndlistar“, eins og Sigurður segir í áðurnefndu viðtali. Ekki fer mikið fyrir frásögn í mynd- um Sigurðar, en þeir sem samneytt hafa listamannin- um á góðum stundum geta vottað um margþættan fróðleik hans og frásagnargleði. Engin leið er að skýra, hvers vegna einmana drengur í myndsnauðu umhverfi tekur upp á því að teikna. Sjálfur telur Sigurður myndlistarhæfileika sinn kominn úr móðurætt. Amma hans, Stefanía, sem dó ung, fékkst mikið við að teikna með blýanti ýmsa hluti sem voru hendi næst. En það er til marks um það umburðarlyndi sem ríkti á heimili Sigurðar, og er ríkur þáttur í skaphöfn hans sjálfs, að ýtt var undir teiknihneigð hans frekar en hitt. Þegar Sigurður var fimmtán eða sextán ára, kom faðir hans með litakassa að sunnan og gaf honum. Síðar, þegar yngri systkini Sigurðar, Guðrún og Hrólfur, gerðu sig líkleg til að fylgja í fótspor bróður síns, tóku foreldrar þeirra því með jafnaðargeði. í Menntaskólanum á Akureyri, þar sem Sigurður var á árunum 1931 til 1937, færðist teikniárátta hans í aukana fremur en hitt. Þá hafði hann fengið nasasjón af myndlist, hafandi skoðað yfirlitssýningu þá sem sett var upp í Reykjavík í tilefni af alþingishátíðinni 1930, 12 myself in nature and formed an intimate relationship with every hill and hillock around me.” (Steinar og sterkir litir, p. 69) Sigurðsson, who was born in 1916, comes from an illustrious family in Skagafjörður, in the north of lceland. His father and namesake was a local sheriff, and his grandfather was both a clergyman and a member of the lcelandic parliament, the Althing. Sigurðsson’s mother, Stefanía Arnórsdóttir, was a clergyman’s daughter. Art wasn’t high on the list of priorities in Sigurðsson’s childhood home. “My family was more interested in scholarship and poetry than in the visual arts,” says Sigurðsson in the interview quoted above. Scholarship or poetic narrative doesn’t play a part in his pictures, but those who have met the artist can attest to his erudition and love of storytelling. It is a mystery why a lonely boy, deprived of artistic stimulus begins to express himself in drawings. Sigurðsson thinks his passion for art can be traced to his family on his mother’s side. His grandmother, Stefanía, who died young, used to do a great deal of drawing, using everyday objects around her as subject matter. But it is indicative of the atmosphere of tolerance found in Sigurðsson’s home, a trait which forms a significant part of his own make-up, that his efforts at drawing were not frowned on, but rather actively encouraged. When Sigurðsson was fifteen or sixteen years old, his father brought him a box of colours from Reykjavík. Later, when his younger brother and sister, Hrólfur and Guðrún, decided to follow in his footsteps, their parents made little effort to dissuade them. In Akureyri’s higher elementary school, where Sigurðsson studied from 1931 to 1937, he began to draw seriously. By then he had seen some “real” art, particularly the 1930 festival exhibition in Reykjavík, featuring most of lceland’s best known artists, and during his school years an exhibition of the work of

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