WOMEN & GIRLS DESERVE BETTER......FEMALE ARTIST EDITION

    There's been more than one female artist who under the Patriarchy was either denied the fame she deserved, had her art work stolen, or had her talent overlooked, because she was a woman. The good news is that eventually everything comes back around, and she eventually is recognized for her accomplishments.

    The film Seraphine, explores the life of an artist whom we should've heard of, but didn't. According to her bio:

"She was a French painter in the naive style. Self-taught, she was inspired by her religious faith and by stained-glass church windows and other religious art. The intensity of her images, both in colour and in replicative designs, are sometimes interpreted as a reflection of her own psyche, walking a tightrope between ecstasy and mental illness."

She didn't have the easiest life, losing her mother at the age of 1 and her father at the age of 7. She eventually found herself working as a housekeeper for a middle-class family, and painting at night by candlelight. The trailer above is from the film Seraphine, and I would strongly recommend watching it.

     Then there's the story of Margaret Keane, whose husband gained fame and fortune for his wide-eyed paintings of children. The problem is that he wasn't actually the one painting any of them, his wife was. She was basically being held hostage and forced to paint for a man who took all the credit for her work. There is nothing worse as an artist than having your work stolen. The good news is that a new film which focuses on her story is setting the record straight and finally giving her the credit she deserves.

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/oct/26/art-fraud-margaret-walter-keane-tim-burton-biopic?CMP=share_btn_fb

      The last female artist I wanted to highlight is a young woman in Brazil who is using her talent as a graffiti artist to draw attention to women and girl's rights. I remember a number of years ago a female filmmaker made a comment about how when women make films we usually make them about women's  issues, and she said it in this way like there was something wrong with that. I know that a lot of women become artists so that we can express what it's like to be a woman, and using a powerful medium like film or other forms of art to do so is very important. We shouldn't be expected to make any specific kind of art as women, but it also should not be seen as unimportant because the artwork is dealing with women's rights.

http://www.vitalvoices.org/vital-voices-women/featured-voices/panmela-castro