The Unwilling Feminist. Or, dealing with the role of gender in one's own art.

I hopped the Metro-North up to New Haven yesterday to attend Yale's MFA Open House. On the way back, my tired mind inevitably wandered to the topic of my own artwork. It looped idly around the whats and whys, contextualized by having just visited a dozen studios of first-year MFA students as they approach the end of their first semester in the country's top painting grad program. My conversations with them tended toward a discussion of their work itself and how its direction is changing since coming into the program, the where and when of their undergrad, and the portfolio and interview portions of the application process. And so I was left pondering how the disparate tangents of work that I'm making and brainstorming (the bodyfolds, the babies, the dress paintings) make sense together as a body of work.

This isn't a new rumination, by any means. Since mostly abandoning my previous 'style'/approach, I've been trying to let myself paint whatever it is that attracts me, without [too much] judgement. There have been ample fits and starts and dead ends, though, leaving a wake of scattered ideas and unfinished pieces. How to bring it all together into something cohesive and application-worthy (whether for grad school or another opportunity) is something I'm often trying to figure out.

Bodyfolds 1 Oil on canvas, 23"x23"

Baby #3: Dexter Oil on canvas, 17"x17"

This train of thought keeps bringing me to the same conclusion: I seem to be painting about "women's issues." And every time I reach that idea, I'm quite taken aback. Surprised, and dare I say, appalled. And then I'm a little horrified or embarrassed at my own reaction. Is it really so horrible to think that I might be painting about "women's issues," whatever that means? Is the thought of being a feminist artist so terrible?

No, of course not. But it's not something I identify with, either. I've never considered “women's issues” or feminism at all central to my existence or philosophy, perhaps to the chagrin of the women around me. I have been content to essentially see the world as somewhat ungendered, or to accept and live by "men's" rules (and often, to win by them, at least according to my own scorekeeping). The way I see it, I am a body but I don't feel like a terribly gendered body.

Except when I do feel like a terribly gendered body, which of course makes me incredibly anxious. And my paintings tend to come from a place of anxiety. If the challenge is now to figure out the underlying impetus of my imagemaking (rather than what the images themselves have in common, which worked for me in the past) then maybe there's your answer.

So, now to deal with this idea that I might be painting about "women's issues" or making "feminist art" or something along those lines. I think one problem I have with owning those sorts of statements is that they feel incredibly universal, whereas I'm intending to make work about the personal. I'm primarily just sorting out my own shit here; if it's relevant or resonates with someone else, that's great, but ultimately it's secondary. I identify more closely with the multitudes of artists who use personal mythology, psychology, and narrative as content. Furthermore, there's some frustration over the tendency for the question of gender to always be brought up in the context of women's work, but not in a man's.

Help Is Not Appealing
Karla Black, 2010
Sugar paper, chalk, spray paint, ribbon.

“It bothers me that only women's work is gendered. I wouldn't mind these questions if male artists were also asked them.” - Karla Black, interviewed in Modern Painters, October 2011

But I also wonder if that tide might be turning a bit. Both Andrew Salgado (whose show, “Anxious,” was up at Tache Gallery until just today, I believe) and Aaron Smith are working with ideas about masculinity and its portrayal in a way that seems akin to how some women artists who really own their feminine or feminist content have been dealing with those issues.

Untitled (After Bataille)Andrew Salgado, 2010 Oil on canvas, 40"x36"

Zooshy Aaron Smith: 2011 Oil on panel, 60"x48"

In examining my work, where it comes from, and where it fits, I think what is closer to the truth is that it comes out of my failure or refusal to embrace women's role(s). The bodyfolds paintings definitely arose out of a tense relationship with my own flesh. The baby paintings arose out of my anxiety (and if I'm totally honest, my attraction/repulsion tension) over children and childbearing. The dress paintings started with inklings of feminine costume or artifice -- quite literally the "trappings" of womanhood? -- perhaps involving mother-daughter relationships and coming-of age rites, and are now shaping up to have something to do with a feeling of foreignness in my own skin.

Lastly, part of my rejection or discomfort over where or whether my art might intersect feminist art comes out of the fact that I'm almost wholly uninformed about the whole thing. Feminism and art? I have no clue, really. I was at the Brooklyn Art Museum a few weeks ago with a friend, where we saw the Dinner Party and got into a discussion about its merits or lack thereof. All I could really say is something like “well it's art-historically important.” I have embarrassingly little knowledge of that whole realm, both historically and whatever may be going on contemporarily. Luckily, to fix that, I just need to read up.