Women of the West (WoW)

Every day for the next 45 days I will be sharing
a portrait of a historical female Alberta artist and her story. 

This body of work features historical female artists that were working in Alberta during the early 1900s. As a long-time resident and female artist in this province, I have felt the challenges that women face in the art world today, with an understanding that in the past the challenges were even greater. Researching archives opens the doors to the history of the women artists that contributed to the growth of arts in Alberta.

I studied Art & Design in the mid-1980s where women artists were not really discussed and, when I enrolled in art history classes during the pandemic, I was surprised to learn that there is still not much information about female artists in the curriculum. There is even less information about female artists specific to Alberta.

In 2008, I attended an exhibition of work by Margaret Shelton at the Collectors' Gallery in Inglewood where I was fascinated to see her orange bike and paint box. She had painted her bike using house paint to make it more visible on the roads and would pack her art supplies and tent to cycle from the Drumheller Valley to the Rocky Mountains where she would create watercolour paintings and woodcut prints. She was a school teacher who used scholarship money to study at the Banff Centre under professional artists such as A.C. Leighton, Walter Phillips and more. She is one of the many inspiring Alberta women artists who created in spite of the challenges they faced.

Beginning the project during my Artist Residency with the Alberta Society of Artists in 2024, which was founded by A.C. Leighton, I explored the use of full-sized watercolour sheets coated with a medium for durability. My goal was to incorporate figurative work along with the work or belongings of each artist. I found that I missed working solely on portraits and switched to 12x12 inch cradled and prepared wood panels. Like Georgia O’Keeffe intended with her paintings of flowers, I want to invite the viewer to stop and learn about these important women.

I want to thank the Archivists at the Galt Museum, Whyte Museum and Paul D. Fleck Library and Archives at the Banff Centre for their assistance along with numerous others who reached out to share stories and photographs after learning about this project on CBC Radio (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/women-artists-alberta).