5 Women Artists Who Have Inspired My Creative Journey
March is Women’s History Month and what better time to share about women artists who have inspired me in my creative journey?
I have a minor in Art History, so I have studied art history in depth. It’s clear that women have often been overlooked in the arts, and art history is often predominantly focused on male artists. There are a few more commonly known female artists. Still, most people are more familiar with male artists like Picasso, Da Vinci, Van Gogh, Monet, Rodin, Seurat, Pollock, Dali, Matisse, Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Warhol, Degas, Klimt, and the list goes on.
Now see how many of these names you recognize in comparison; O’Keeffe, Kusama, Cassatt, Vigée Le Brun, De Lempicka, Gentileschi, Frankenthaler, Kahlo, Bourgeois, Af Klint, Krasner, Rie, Moses, Mitchell, and Sherman. Did you recognize as many as you did from the male artists? Probably not.
My point is that women have not received the recognition they deserve in art history. Sadly so many women artists are missing from our history books, and their work and stories are forgotten or lost forever. I’m thankful for the ones who made their mark so that other women could see women do have a place in the art world and art history books.
Here are 5 Women Artists Who Inspired me in my life and art career:
Georgia O’Keeffe
One of the few more widely recognized female artists, Georgia O’Keeffe was one of my favorites from a young age. O’Keeffe was an American artist who was a part of the American Modernism movement. Her large abstracted floral paintings have had a profound impact on my own work.
I love what she said about flowers and her art, and how she wanted to make people see the flower, and to stop and appreciate the details and forms of flowers. That resonated with me. I’ve always been very detail oriented and appreciative of the beauty in the details. Her work emphasizes those details and forces the viewer to experience something so small and intricate on a larger scale. By focusing in on and simplifying the details her work takes on an abstract form.
Her paintings have changed how I see and interact with flowers. When I photograph flowers I often take many closeups that take on a more abstracted look. Georgia O'Keeffe’s artwork continues to inspire me today. I am grateful that her work and her interpretation of flowers have been given the prominent place in art history that her work deserves.
“Nobody sees a flower really; it is so small. We haven’t time, and to see takes time...”, “When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people…” “have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not.”
Frida Kahlo
Mexican painter Frida Kahlo has been an inspiration to me not just as an artist, but as a woman who struggles with chronic pain and illness. I’m inspired by Frida Kahlo’s persistence and dedication to her artwork despite her debilitating injuries and health problems.
I first learned of Kahlo while working on my BFA. I was struggling with my health and the negative impacts it was having on my ability to make artwork. My advisor told me about Frida Kahlo, and she recommended that I get a copy of her diary. I was inspired by her story and how she made art a priority even when her body was broken. I still have that book, and it reminds me of what we can overcome, and how art can be an outlet for our pain. It can be therapeutic and cathartic to create work that embodies our struggles and challenges in life.
Frida Kahlo reminds me to make time for my art no matter what I’m dealing with in life. Making art is healing and as essential as breathing to an artist. As Kahlo said,
“I never paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality.”
Louise Bourgeois
Louise Bourgeois was a modern and contemporary French-American artist. She’s another artist I learned about in university. She is best known for her large-scale sculptures and installations, but she was also a prolific painter and printmaker.
I was inspired by the scale of her work. Although I’m not a fan of spiders in real life, seeing a woman creating work that was dark and took up so much space in the world was inspiring. At the time I was working on my BFA in three-dimensional art and was doing a lot of sculpting.
I can’t understate just how important representation is for a young person, and how important it is to see someone who you can relate to doing something that you want to do in life. For me seeing a woman artist working in multiple art forms, and creating such large-scale artwork and prolific body of work gave me hope and validation. I said to myself, “If she can do it so can I.”
Similar to Kahlo, Bourgeois’s work was very personal and cathartic, but instead of dealing with tangible realities her work was more abstracted often dealing with processing her complex emotions and past traumas. I’ve always had a similar emotional style and attachment to my work as it often represents something deeper to me that is not always apparent to the viewer.
She said about her work,
“My art is a form of restoration in terms of my feelings to myself and to others.” “I know that when I finish a drawing, my anxiety level decreases. The realistic drawings are a way of pinning down an idea. I don’t want to lose it. With the abstract drawings, when I’m feeling loose, I can slip into the unconscious.” “Even though what I do does enter the market, it doesn’t interest me. I am exclusively concerned with the formal qualities of my work. It is about the need and the right to self-expression.” “…My work is a confessional.” “I have drawn my whole life. My parents were in the tapestry restoration business, and as a young girl, I would draw in the missing parts of the tapestry that needed to be rewoven.”
Hilma Af Klint
It pains me to say that I didn’t learn about Swedish artist Hilma Af Klint until recent years despite having an Art History minor. She was a true visionary and the mother of abstract painting. Her abstract paintings predate abstract paintings done by Wassily Kandinsky. Hilma Af Klint painted her first abstract series about 5 years before Kandinsky painted what has been widely accepted as the first abstract artwork. Both her body of work and the scale of her abstract oil paintings are impressive. She was a classically trained artist, but she kept her colorful abstract work intentionally hidden. I’m still learning more about Af Klint, and continue to find her inspiring. How she so boldly created work in a new style and so prolifically is inspiring to me.
I’m also inspired by the spontaneity of her process. It was something I was often criticized for in my formal training as an artist. There was an emphasis on planning, sketching out ideas, and having a plan for the finished work, but sometimes my best work comes from a spontaneous and intuitive place. I wish I had heard these words by Af Klint back then because they would have helped me to not have so much doubt in my creative process. I do find them helpful today in feeling like I was justified to continue to go against expectations and just create the work that flows out of me without question.
“The pictures were painted directly through me, without preliminary drawings and with great power. I had no idea what the pictures would depict and still I worked quickly and surely without changing a single brush-stroke.”
Helen Frankenhaller
Helen Frankenhaller was an American abstract expressionist painter. She created the soak-stain technique and her work influenced the development of the Color Field movement. Her work is colorful, bold, and expressive. She’s another female artist who inspired me to experiment with different mediums. In addition to painting, she also did sculpture, printmaking, ceramics, and tapestry to name a few. She also created large-scale paintings. She definitely forged her own path and went against conventions.
I’ve always been a bit rebellious and felt like experimenting was more important than following the ‘rules’ when it comes to making art and being an artist. I felt a kinship with Frankenhaller in her thinking and expressive approach.
She said,
“There are no rules. That is how art is born, that is how breakthroughs happen. Go against the rules or ignore the rules, that is what invention is about.”
I just relate to the way she spoke about her process and her artwork. Here are several quotes by Frankenhaller that I feel like I could have written myself.
“Painting is a form of self-expression, a way to tell my own story.”
“I find inspiration in nature, capturing its essence and energy in my paintings.”
“I strive to create a balance between control and spontaneity in my work.”
“The process of creating art is just as important as the final result.”
“I paint in order to understand and express the complexities of life.”
“The act of painting is a meditative process, allowing me to immerse myself fully in the present moment.”
“Art is a reflection of the human experience, capturing our joys, sorrows, and struggles.”
“I find beauty in the imperfections and the spontaneous moments that arise during the creative process.”
Her words speak to my soul and my creative spirit as much as her artwork does. I’m inspired by her creative vision and voice.
Final words
These are just a few women artists who have inspired me in my life and creative journey. Overall, they made me feel a sense of belonging, and that the way I see the world, create, and express myself is a valid way to be and become a successful artist. These artists were very different and created very different artwork, but they all shared similarities in how and why they created. Their work was expressive and personal. They were not afraid to try many different mediums, techniques, and styles, and more than anything that is what I relate to in my creative process.
Read More About The Artists:
Georgia O'Keeffe: One Hundred Flowers - My favorite O’Keeffe book filled with large reproductions of her flower art.
The Art and Life of Georgia O’Keeffe - The first book I purchased about Georgia O’Keeffe.
The Diary of Frida Kahlo - The book that my advisor in art school recommended to me about Frida Kahlo.
Fantastic Women: Surreal Worlds from Meret Oppenheim to Louise Bourgeois - This book includes Frida Kahlo and Louise Bourgeois.
Louise Bourgeois: An Intimate Portrait - A look at the life of one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century.
Louise Bourgeois: Paintings - Most known for sculpting this book focuses on her paintings.
Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future - A catalog of her groundbreaking abstract painting series.
Hilma af Klint: A Biography - A book about the Swedish painters’ life.
Fierce Poise: Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York - A biography of one of the twentieth century’s most respected painters.
Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art - A book about five women who revolutionized the modern art world.
Women of Abstract Expressionism - This book includes Helen Frankenthaler, Lee Krasner, Grace Hartigan, Elaine de Kooning, and more.
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All photos in this post by Bec Bookwalter.
