Monday, February 4, 2008

show opened

The Portside miniature show opening yesterday and was a great success. The weather was good (the last couple of years it was terrible)
My parents always enjoy going to these things so I took them with me. (It was super bowl so the hubby stayed home). My Mom in particular is always amazed by the quality and variety of work, and she commented on the number of my ‘art friends’ that are women. In all of the groups I’m in the number of women to men is about 10 gals to each guy. I’m not sure why, perhaps it’s just that women tend to like to work together in groups. Perhaps something else is going on... I don’t know.
What’s interesting is that it seems that the general public tends to think of artists as being male, and usually gay. When I do demonstrations in public places I hear that comment over and over.
I’ve got to tell you the misconception is wrong. Do women simply have a more developed aesthetic sense? Has our society made it seem ‘unmanly’ to be artistic?? I don’t know, but most of the guys in our groups are manly enough for anyone.
When you google women in art you’ll quickly find out that through the ages there have been a lot of female artists, even though it was up until very recently, a very tough field for a woman to be taken seriously in. There are several documented cases of women who dressed as boys so that they could study art. (Perhaps that’s why so many people think gay man, when they think artist.) One of the most famous was Marietta Robusti in the 1500's.
Some like Artemisia Gentileschi were branded as Monstrous, even as her genius was recognized. It was a common practice for dealers to ‘re-assign’ the work of women to men of the era. In the Guild systems women were not allowed to take ranks and could not qualify as ‘masters,.read wikipedia -women in art- and your eyes will be opened.
Ironically, the patron Saint of artists is St. Catherine. She was an abbess and artist, in the middle-ages. Did you know that the artists who did the illuminated manuscripts were largely women, like her??
Time to get off my soap box, here is Eve. As you can see I'm done the underpainting, of the figure and am ready to start underpainting the back ground.

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