Let's just set the record straight, I am not an activist! However, I am enraged by the continual circumvention and exclusion of women throughout history to the present day. I also don’t despise men, as it's not obligatory to detest one group and to stand up for the rights of another. Women are and have been the butt of jokes in the media, whether that’s a comic or a tv series - and that's ok! We take it and laugh at it ourselves, after all, comedy stretches everywhere in today's world. Yet, as there has to be some truth in humour for it to be relevant, it more often refers directly to the real world in a real sense of acceptance where women are concerned. It’s that old boy's joke of 'yes that sounds like women’. If still seems that if a woman makes a minor step of progress in the world and stands up for that progress, then they must be a raging feminist, lesbian or part of the ‘feminazi’! So here I am, on a feminist art rant.
I paint predominately with acrylics but use many mediums to finish a piece depending on my mood. I might throw pastels or anything else that makes a colour. My painting style is mostly abstract, contemporary, sometimes delving into other styles to suit the subject. I am currently exploring and interpreting traditional looking 1950’s housewife pulp art and adding a modern twist.
A ‘Woman’s Place’ is one of my favourites, it’s a little bit pulp fiction. It mentions the kitchen, but you also get the feeling of it being the last straw, that enough is enough. It’s a continual patriarchal joke that women belong in the kitchen. Well not today, it’s not funny anymore and it's so incredibly ignorant.
‘Suffragette in 2D’ was one of the first pieces I did in this collection and it's an exact image from a suffragette march, but I have replaced the women with stereotypical 2D characters from our tv screens. They each represent, I believe, the image of how women are still seen in generally men, even men that have no idea about the suffragette movement. It’s simple but effective. It’s sad that the only part of female history that people may remember learning about are the Suffragettes.
I followed on from this theme when I stumbled across a random piece about ‘The Forty Elephants’. Who are they? Well, they’re part of female British history! They were a prolific gang of female thieves who caused quite a ruckus back in the late nineteenth and twentieth Century. An all- London crime syndicate whose skill for shoplifting was ona very large scale and the way they handled business was admired by their male counter parts. This inspired me to research them and then paint some pop art portraits of 4 of the members including Alice Diamond who was the leader. I wanted to make them look fun and innocent (though, who they were was quite the opposite). They were so much fun to create, and I called them ‘The Forty Elephants. O.G.’ (Original gangster), I even put them on a t-shirt because I love to tell the story when someone asks me. For it’s another forgotten part of female history that helps to counter the silliness of portraying women in the kitchen and reveals real human beings with lives, albeit a life of crime.
I was reading a pop art book one day, in particular a section about Lichtenstein, and it riled me. The piece talked about how he liked his women to be ‘damsels in distress’ so that’s how he painted them and that the man was the hero. I decided there and then to adjust his ‘Drowning Girl’ piece. It’s called ‘No Longer Drowning Girl’ and expresses our ability, a woman's ability, to not only save ourselves but to also not wait for someone else to rescue you, mentally or physically, from distress. And then there is ‘Mansplainer.’ It’s such a fun piece and makes me chuckle at my own joke every time I look at it. I like to watch people laugh at it and then ask what it means. My usual response is for them to look it up in the dictionary. I couldn’t believe it myself, but it was there and it’s such a perfect word.
Mansplaining (a blending of the words ‘man’ and ‘explaining’) is a pejorative term meaning (of a man) "to comment on or explain something to a woman in a condescending, overconfident, and often inaccurate or oversimplified manner".
(Taken from Wikipedia)
It’s done in the style of a horror pulp comic, as I wanted her to depict that she was cowering from a man coming to explain something to her. I think this also is one of my favourites.
There are several other pieces I have done, and I think I will continue along this path as I really enjoy the process and execution. I hope to exhibit sometime next year and hold a female only show. My good friend Si Griffiths owns The Forbidden Carnival Gallery in Chippenham, which is an alternative gallery and ‘Mansplainer’ is currently exhibited there alongside ‘A woman’s place' and 'A woman’s worth.' I believe that art really should spark an emotive response from its viewer. Before this collection I had a show that mostly focused on mental health. It portrayed a lot of my own thoughts and experiences, and it read like a book from one end of the room to the other. It was a moment of realisation that although it's just paint I’m putting on canvas it gives you a voice as a woman, a mother to a daughter, and an artist - I have something to say!
Copyedits made by the Editor.
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