AIR 106.1

Category: AIR 1061 FM
 Published: Wednesday, 02 May 2018 07:43
 Written by Derek Craddock

An Airdrie artist has just completed one of the biggest projects of her career by painting 100 portraits of women in 100 days.

Veronica Funk started the portraits in January because she felt that she was not challenging herself as an artist.  After reading about a challenge of painting 100 portraits in 100 days, she needed inspiration, and she found some in an unusual way.

Back in the 2016 Presidential Election campaign, Donald Trump made negative comments towards Hillary Clinton during a debate.  It led to the poem “Nasty Woman” by Nina Donovan, which touched on the issue of oppression towards women.

“We are privileged in North America,” said Funk. “It’s not good for us to remain apathetic, we need to stand up and speak. First, I was upset a little bit by that and then I realized, she’s right, but it doesn’t have to be in a negative way.”

Funk said she put out a call on Social Media to find 100 women who were interested in having their portraits done.

“Within the first day, I had almost 200 women respond. Over half of them are from the community but they are also from throughout Alberta and even across the country. The bulk are Airdrie and Calgary.”

While it was a long time to finish the portraits, Funk made the most of each one.

“It all came together very quickly. What I did is I took one hundred 8 by 10-inch canvases and I prepared the backgrounds with lots of colours, using spray paint to kind of graffiti-inspired, street art and then I painted a portrait on each of them throughout the hundred days.”

The final portrait was finished on April 30th, with the entire artwork now on display at Inglewood Fine Arts in Calgary.

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