Painting, Gender, and space: Aspects of Contemporary Women's Painting Practice in Context

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Notes

¹Síghle Bhreathnach-Lynch argues that when an Irish woman appears in imagery in the early twentieth century, she is normally depicted within the landscape. Women were portrayed as predominantly rural, depicted in peasant costume, and set against a rustic landscape (11). Equally, Catherine Nash argues:

The idea of the primitive was appropriated but positively evaluated against the urban, industrial, colonial power. This primitivization of the West and of women, which has as a strong element the supposed unsuppressed instinctiveness, sexuality, and un-self-conscious sensuality of the primitive, had to be reconciled with the use of woman by cultural nationalists as signifier of moral purity and sexual innocence. (235)

²In Tawadros's essay “Beyond the Boundary: The Work of Three Black Women Artists in Britain,” Himid states:

The artistic practice of gathering and re-using is said to have been invented in Paris in the Twenties by Picasso … Paris jumped for joy at the “discovery” of Africa and her artifacts and stole them … gathering and re-using has always been a part of Black creativity … it does not mimic and is inextricably linked to economic circumstances. (121)

FIGURE 2 Lubaina Himid: Freedom and Change, 1984. Mixed media, paint on sheet with painted wood, w. 460 cm. © Lubaina Himid: Courtesy of the artist.