Being a Female Artist Is Powerful
Something important shifted for almost all of us at the Female Artists’ Workshop. (See article on page 29.) I would say that we came to a deeper understanding of the importance of female art, of our creativity as a revolutionary tool, and of ourselves as female artists. The following are some of my insights:
- Being a female artist in whatever way we choose is a powerful act. It heads us toward our unique voice, our “real person,” and powerful leadership.
- Artists are specialists in thinking about what does not yet exist and finding new solutions because of that.
- Being a female artist contradicts how we were limited as girls and the whole “soup” of sexism, racism, and classism. How courageous we are to take this on! How strong we are! How important it is that we never underestimate our importance as female artists.
- We need to think big. We can set goals for achieving everything that matters to us, including ourselves. We can find the resources to help us stick with what we want to do. We can decide where we want to spend our time, attention, money, and effort, instead of reacting to what happens and making things go well for everyone according to sexism.
- We can build a strong and diverse network of women artists so we can prioritize our artwork and handle all that divides us as women artist leaders. As old unbearable feelings from early defeats show up, we can have each other to remind us of what matters and to help us discharge and move forward in making art and fighting against all the ways capitalism has taken away our joy in making and thinking about art.
- We female artists work hard. We are skilled. We are solution finders. We use our intuition and good thinking to make art but also to negotiate prices, write, publish, exhibit, find materials, and study the work of other artists. There is joy and play in our work—but it is work. (A message of artists’ oppression is that artists’ work is not “real work.”)
- Authentic art is revolutionary. We can decide to use our voice against social injustice, the climate crisis, and other challenges. At the same time, all art is valuable and important.
- Sharing our art is a powerful way to have a session. Our art reveals something precious about ourselves. When we showed ourselves when we were young, we were often ridiculed and criticized. Some of us were pressured to be the artist our parents wanted us to become. Our art and our minds were under attack from the strict judgments of class oppression and from “mental health” oppression. At the workshop it was special to show my art to women who had discharged enough to be able to listen to my fear connected with female artists and “mental health” oppression.
I’m reaching for more of my authentic self while painting. What will come out of me when I dig deeper? Will I be shocked about what I discover about myself? Do I dare to let myself go deep without the usual control? When I show what I make, will it prove that I am not okay? Old feelings can still feel so true.
Showing my art and myself helps me be a more authentic, decisive, and courageous female leader in general. That helps me, as a middle-class and white female, to more easily support those who are leading on stopping the climate crisis and its threat to human existence.
Doetinchem, the Netherlands
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion list for leaders of artists
(Present Time 201, October 2020)