By a Lady
By a Lady
Last week’s painting was all about colorful blooms, and this week it’s black and white! I actually worked on both at the same time (as some of you might have seen in my Instagram Stories!) Indeed I find it really helpful to go back and forth between different projects and switch whenever I get stuck. It helps me stay in the flow!
I’m still focused on completing some unfinished artworks at the moment, and I think I started this one about two years ago. I remember that underneath the layers was a painting I did as an exercise during my coaching training, but I’m not absolutely sure what it was (in fact, we painted on the same canvas many times over!).
Years later I remember taking it out again and covering it up with book pages and gesso, my favorite “not-so-blank” canvas technique (which we explore in Soulful Abstracts). I kept it nearby to pick up India ink and paint leftovers as I was working on two larger abstracts (see them HERE and HERE).
What happened next is that I loved what was starting to emerge: a very simple horizon composition, a minimalist color scheme (black, white and plenty of subtle neutrals), a sense of airiness and freedom. I knew it was unfinished but I could feel it wanted to stay as it was for a while longer. So I kept it on a shelf for inspiration, and even after we moved house last year I kept it on display in my new studio.
Then finally last week, while I was working on a colorful floral and waiting for a layer to dry, I just felt like picking it up. I wasn’t sure what I would do with it but I started by taking a good look at it, and especially at all those pages in the background.
That’s when I realized I hadn’t chosen those pages at random all that time ago. Almost all of them are from Emily Dickinson’s Collected Poems and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice: the under-layer of the whole painting is infused with the words, stories, thoughts and emotions of two women, two artists who deeply inspire me.
In a matter of seconds, the painting that had started rather masculine was covered in a free-flowing garland of blooms! I painted them super fast and intuitively with my biggest black paint marker, which allowed me to stay bold and loose. The moment I painted them felt so liberating, like a breath of fresh air, a sense of freedom and relief.
(For those of you who will undoubtedly wonder, it’s this kind of marker *affiliate link)
I guess this is what women artists of the past centuries could feel as they turned away from the constraints of society for just a moment, to write, paint and lose (find?) themselves in art. Not so long ago, women were not supposed to be artists, to speak their mind or express their feelings. Unfortunately, this is still true in many parts of the world and I feel so much gratitude for the ladies of the past who dared to light the way.
Jane Austen is one of my favorite authors (so much so that I created a series of paintings and an online class inspired by her… I might be a bit of a groupie!) but in her time, being a novelist was not a proper occupation for a woman and she didn’t publish her work under her own name. Yet she didn’t choose a pen name nor did she use a man’s name either, as others did. “By a Lady” is what appears on the title pages of her novels. No, she didn’t dare to publicly own that she was an artist, yet she clearly affirms that her work is the work of a woman. To me there is simplicity, courage and a sense of mystery in those three little words, and I’ve chosen them as the title of this painting.
Being part of a community of like-minded artists, and especially artist ladies, has been so important to help me embrace my own path. So I want to dedicate this painting to YOU, with your wild, beautiful creative dreams. YOU, who may not always give yourself enough credit, or simply time, to be the artist you know you are, deep in your soul. Others have come before us, forged their own path and become our inspiration. May we dare to bloom, freely and unapologetically, so we can be an inspiration to each other and to future generations of artists!
light and love,
PS: Which lady artists from the past inspire you? Please tell me in a comment below!
PPS: This original painting will be available for purchase during the online Handmade Holiday Event hosted by Stephanie Gagos at the end of the year. Subscribe to my email newsletter to stay in the loop!