Women Painting Women

Women Painting Women show at the J. Cacciola Gallery in NY.

The gallery released this press release summing up today's hot topic of Women Painting Women - basing its show on this theme next month. They wrote:

"Art history is rife with female imagery, almost all of it painted by men. The masculine idealization of women, often referred to as the “Male Gaze,” has been a staple of art historical debate for decades now, with no resolution in sight. After all, the fact that a male artist, Titian, painted the “Venus of Urbino,” or the very macho Picasso painted abstractions of his lover Dora Maar neither adds nor subtracts from the paintings’ aesthetic qualities as masterpieces. But though the “Male Gaze” may incorporate the highest qualities of art, it does call into question the definition of womanhood. With rare exception (Artemesia Gentileschi, Mary Cassatt, Berthe Morisot, Marie Laurencin among the notable few), women’s definition of themselves is nearly absent from the history of art. It is only recently that artwork by women has been taken seriously by the art establishment, and indeed is still woefully underrepresented in major collections and galleries.
 

J. Cacciola Gallery’s exhibition WOMEN PAINITNG WOMEN: Shelley Adler, Edwige Fouvry, and Kim Frohsin is part of the contemporary push to serve as a corrective to that imbalance, in this case through figurative imagery. The works by Fouvry, Frohsin and Adler present us with three distinct views of female experience, but the exhibition is not an implicitly political one; it is first and foremost an aesthetic one, presenting the work of three brilliant contemporary practitioners of art’s most traditional medium, painting."

When I read this opening paragraph, I knew it touched a place of motivational and inspirational power inside me. I too, paint women as a woman. It had never been put so blunty before me - that in Art History, men were the painters, not women. Women today don't seem to be phased by our history, since it's not OUR own personal history or experience. We choose to see the open playing field of opportunity in a world who cries to be equal. 

Finally as a Painter, not just a woman, I want to express my gratitude towards the J. Cacciola Gallery in support of reconizing all forms of women's advancement, esp. reconizing the field of Women Painting Pomen. It warms my heart that this subject is getting the attention it deserves. Please attend their show, Women Painting Women September 4 - 27, 2014  Opening Reception: Thursday, September 11, 2014 6pm-8pm. More information on their website.