This past week, a group of illustrators issued a challenge on Instagram to get to know, and to illustrate, 7 women artists whose work is amazing, but not well known. The first one was Niki de Saint Phalle, a French-American sculptor, painter, and film maker who is best known for her giant mosaic sculptures of women, called 'Nanas.' Like all of the other artists, she worked for women's rights and racial equality throughout her life and in her work.
The second artist was a Japanese artist, Yayoi Kusama. She is still working, and openly confronts issues that bring attention to mental health. Her philosophy is that she is just one red dot among many other dots, and polka dots are common in her work. She is also a performance artist, and creates amazing infinity rooms. While her work fascinates me, she is perhaps the one I had most difficulty sketching and relating to.
I loved the work of the third artist, Hilma af Klint. She was creating abstract art before Wassily Kandinsky, who is credited with creating the 'first abstract art.' After losing a sister at a young age, she became a spiritualist, believing that her work came through her from the spiritual realm. She was a contemporary of Arthur Conan Doyle (though she was Swedish, and he was British,) who was also a spiritualist. Before her death, Hilma af Klint sealed her artwork, allowing it to be opened only after she had been dead for 20 years. When it was opened, the number of works, and the size of many of them, was astounding... and stunning!
Tamara de Lempicka was born in Poland, but worked mostly in France and the US, painting Art Deco portraits of the wealthy and famous, and stylized nudes. Her work was some I recognized. I sketched her portrait in her style, in Procreate.
Perhaps the sketch I had the most fun creating is the one I did of Faith Ringgold, who has for many years been one of my favorite artist/illustrators! I identify with her as a fiber artist, as she creates the most wonderful art quilts, which are then often used to illustrate children's books. To create her portrait, I wanted to use fabric, but didn't have time to quilt, so I took photos of some of the fabric in my 'stash,' and 'quilted' it digitally.
Spanish Surrealist painter and creator, Maruja Mallo, was a contemporary of Salvador Dali. The Surrealist movement is not my favorite art era, though I really do like some of Ms. Mallo's work. I chose to sketch her in my own style in my sketchbook, using colored pencils, with her painting 'La Sorpresa del Trigo' (the Surprise of the Wheat) behind her.
The final artist of the week was Augusta Savage, a sculptor, an educator, and a huge influence in the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance movement. Augusta battled sexism, racism, and religious and family discouragement throughout her life and career. She is best known for a large sculpture called "the Harp," or also "Lift Every Voice and Sing." Shown in my sketch, it is of a line of singers, held in a hand, to form a harp. Because she could not afford to have it bronzed, it was destroyed after being exhibited in the 1939 New York World's Fair. Ms. Savage claims her legacy to be the work of her many students, and a scholarship in her name continues to encourage young sculptors.
I confess that I feel very satisfied to have learned about and sketched all seven of these women artists this past week. I began the week thinking I would 'maybe' sketch one or two of them, but each woman's work, or her life story, compelled me to honor her in the only way I knew how: to make her a part of my own art.
