Barbara at work on “Schemer,” Soft Pastel on Sandpaper, 26” x 20”

* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.

You know, you don’t go into the studio and say, “Oh, here I am this marvelous heroine, this wonderful woman doing my marvelous painting so all these marvelous women artists can come after me and do their marvelous painting.”  There you are alone in this huge space and you are not conscious of the fact that you have breasts and a vagina.  You are inside yourself, looking at a damned piece of rag on the wall that you are supposed to make a world out of.  That is all you are conscious of.  I simply cannot believe that a man feels differently… Inside yourself, you are looking at this terrifying unknown and trying to feel, to pull everything you can out of all your experience, to make something.  I think a woman or a man creating feels very much the same way.  I bring my experience, which is different from a man’s, yes, and I put it where I can.  But once that is done, I don’t know if it is a woman’s experience I’m looking at.

Grace Hartigan quoted in Ninth Street Women by Mary Gabriel

Comments are welcome!