Like most female artists, I look to other women artists for inspiration. As much as I appreciated the male poets, novelists, painters and composers, during my undergraduate work, I delighted in my Virginia Woolf seminar, mention of the Bronte sisters, poets like HD and Sylvia Plath.
I spent the rest of my life researching reading and searching out brilliant female artists – to balance the book, to learn more about the madwoman in the attic.
In her book, The Other Side, author Jennifer Higgie chronicles the work of female artists across centuries who created visual works based on their spiritual experiences and beliefs, most notably (and explosively) Hilma af Klint.
When we recall art movements like – in this case -the Surrealists and Futurists, the male artists come easily to mind: Dali, Kandinsky, and Duchamp. The female artists in the same category, Georgiana Houghton, Hilma af Klint and Gabriele Munter were painting, channeling, and expressing the inexplicable. But they never joined the club. While they worked, their male contemporaries busily erased their achievements and their art. The boys club of Surrealists and Futurists flat out banned women from membership. Even if the women artists were talented, maybe especially if they were talented, the men did not want to hear about it. And besides, the women didn’t know the secret handshake.
Higgie tells the story of Janet Sobel, an untrained, 50-year-old housewife who late in her life discovered her passion and talent for painting. Peggy Guggenheim called Sobel “the best woman painter by far in America”. Guggenheim put her money where her mouth was and championed Sobel’s work, hanging her paintings in Guggenheim’s New York gallery.
It was there that Sobel’s The Milky Way stopped Jackson Pollock in his tracks. Her painting inspired his subsequent work of action painting. And while Pollock generously attributed Sobel’s influence, the boys club of reviewer, gallery owners and biographers eliminated eliminated Sobel from the conversation, allowing us to assume Pollock created his works all alone. Ask Lee Krasner, his wife and famous painter herself, about that.
Sobel herself was less concerned about fame and far more involved in her art. “It is not easy to paint. It is very strenuous, but it’s something you’ve got to do if you have the urge.” And that’s what she spent the second half of her life doing.
Many female artists agreed with Sobel. For better or worse, many women artists chose to create rather than waste time with the boys. Artists like Georgia O’Keefe and Agnes Pelton needed to protect their art so throughly they left the city, the galleries and the boys to move to the desert.
Which worked for them, but it may not work for you.
The system is still not friendly to women, nor is it particularly welcoming of outsider art or the outsiders themselves.
But let’s assume you are here to create, not sell, not promote (feel you), but you wouldn’t mind getting your work out of your studio and into the world.
Let’s say you are a painter (since that’s the example we began with). And you want increase your artistic foot print. You want to influence the next generation because that’s a key part of the artistic exchange. To do that, the next generation needs to SEE the work.
Hold your own show, it worked for the Impressionists and it can work for you. Expect a small turn out, but why not? Take part in your community’s open studio or art walk events. You can even rent a space at the Farmer’s Market.
Want to go pro? All it takes is a sale.
Ask a friend to “buy” your work for the introductory price of ten dollars or in exchange for a glass of wine. That friend displays your painting in their living room. They like it, so they show it to their friends. This is how many artists get their start.
That new friend hunts down your work and buys a canvass. Now, two purchases does not a career make, nor will the sales support you in any material way. But the sale counts. Now you are a professional because you exchanged your work for money. Enough of these small steps and you may land space in a gallery, or be featured in the local paper (or web site), or you gain a coveted space on the poetry slam line up.
No question it is a thrill to hold your just published book. It’s a gut-wrenching triumph to read your poem in public. It’s exciting to share your music. Make the art for your soul, and if you get the chance to share it, either inside the boy’s clubhouse or in the forest outside, take the opportunity.
Maybe you’ll donate all your artistic income. Maybe you’ll exchange art for manicures (which is another art, since I never know how things will turn out).
These small steps will help you and your work take up more space.
