Women of Substance
Artist Statement

In my thirties I was in the position of being newly single with a four year old and a baby on the way.  Not being able to continue working as an interior designer due to long hours away from home, I looked for new options. I decided a good career choice would be to be a teacher. Hours were better and the holidays coincided with children’s holidays from school. I headed back to school to complete an education degree.  In spite of my new situation, I thrived at school and loved every minute of it. As a graduation present, my mother who had been very supportive through out the process, gave me a trip to New York and looked after the girls for ten days so that I could go. This would be my last holiday for a very long time as I was starting a full time job in a small city in Saskatchewan only days after I would return.

I had never been to New York before but had heard all about it from a close friend who ended up being my travel companion on the trip. My mother and father had also been there and loved it so no one had to twist my arm to convince me to go. I had very little spending money but that didn’t matter, I had such a wonderful time and it changed me from the inside out in ways that I would not see until much later. Some of my favourite experiences were, sitting in the pear garden at the Cloisters listening to Gregorian chants and smelling the jasmine and lavender while eating my bagged lunch, bumping into and exhibition of Stieglitz photos of O’Keeffe in a small hole in the wall gallery, and galleries, galleries, galleries. Oh and did I say galleries. What a shock it was to wake up a few days after my trip in a coal mining, oil town of mostly blue collar workers. It felt very surreal.

This series of paintings was inspired by my own need for mentors. In this small prairie city I was one of few artists and a single parent. I was left me feeling quite alone and very isolated.  At times, as we sometimes do,  I wondered if I was the only one who understood what it was to struggle.  I also found it incredibly frustrating as a high school teacher, to be asked over and over again by my students, both male and female, why were there no famous women artists, scientists, musicians, writers or explorers? Even more frustrating was that as a woman and a teacher; I did not have a ready answer.  How will this myth ever change if we do not even know that it is a myth?

As I began my quest for mentors through my paintings and sharing them with people, people shared their own stories with me; it was like discovering hidden treasures. I discovered that the paintings I made to save my own soul spoke to others in unexpected ways. I was inspired to investigate new directions that I might never have considered on my own.

In many cases, these mentors were ordinary women who found the strength to do extraordinary things, in spite of great obstacles.

Inspiration for the work has come from many sources including, unicorn tapestries at the Cloisters in NY, illuminated manuscripts in Notre Dame College in Wilcox Saskatchewan, fashion magazines, and fabric and textiles, to name only a few.

I chose the mannequin form as a basic shape of the series because of the pun on the words, “Man o’Kin”. The mannequin became the vessels for the stories of women, my kin. The choice to render the figures without faces allows the figures to be more archetypal, open to greater leaps of imagination, and not locked into a fixed form or identity. It is also a comment on the elusive nature of the feminine in historical documents.

The combination of the medieval manuscript and the hard, modern form of the mannequin marries historical tale to present day. Words become part of the image as they do in the illuminated manuscripts and texture as in the tapestry.  The eye rests on different words or phrases and influences one’s experience of the painting. What is also interesting to me is that cursive writing is not even being taught in schools anymore. It too has been moved into the annals of history.

It is a joy to create these works and learn about the women who have been trailblazers in the historical past and in more recent times. This series has spawned over 100 images and continues to have a life of its own.