Extraordinary Women

While working on 'The Grandmothers' project last year, I kept being reminded of my first portrait project '52  WEEKS::Heroes' and, of course, the 'Nasty Women' project (image above). The first two focused mainly on women in history while the third focused on women in my world today. I began to think about a combination of all three projects, still focusing on the portraits of women, but also chose to include their own words, like the 'Heroes', and also to share the stories of Canadian women who we may or may not know, but who have somehow helped shape the country we live in. There are so many amazing women, and while a lot of them are well known, I wanted to delve into the part of them people aren’t publicly aware of. These women come from fields as diverse as politics, music, sports and theatre and remind me of the progress of feminism and the trail-blazers who have brought the women's rights movement to where it is today. We still have so far to go for equality, equal rights, equal treatment and respect of women, but I was thinking how far we have come. To me, this is once again a collaborative project. Even though I’m in isolation at home, I still feel supported by other women through our virtual world and really want my work to focus on gratitude for the women who came before us. These pieces are created using acrylics on 7x14 inch canvases while continuing to feature the influence of street art in the layers of brayered and airbrushed patterns and colours. To me they represent the layers of experience and history of each of these Extraordinary Women. ​