The powerful ‘virtual’ exhibition “Awakening and Furor” at the Roaring Artist Gallery celebrates the female perspective and response to the perpetual injustices of “women’s rights” through the visual expression.
On the podcast, a conversation with the recipient of the Juror’s Award, abstract painter Lucy Pike and the gallery owner and curator of Roaring Artist Gallery, Katie Bradford Osborne. We talk womanhood, the feminine experience, the parallels of nature and motherhood, and insights into designing a visual arts exhibition.
“Awakening and Furor” exhibition runs until November 13, 2022. To tour the show and participate in artist talks, visit Roaring Artist Gallery. IG handle: @roaringartistgallery
Image Credits: Lucy Pike: Cover Image: “Three,” ink on canvas. Resources for this episode include Museum of Modern Art, Roaring Artist Gallery and Lucy Pike website.
Script: Introduction:
Welcome my art enthusiasts! I am thrilled to celebrate Lucy Pike, a contemporary abstract painter currently residing in Alabama. I had the opportunity to experience her paintings, as a juror for Awakening and Furor exhibition at the Roaring Artist Gallery. Today’s episode will include a conversation with the artist plus the founder and curator of Roaring Artist Gallery, and an artist in her own right, Katie Bradford Osborne.
Before we dive or rather journey through Pike’s abstract works and practice, let’s explore Roaring Artist Gallery, a unique gallery space, a virtual gallery space for emerging women artists and discerning collectors of art. Roaring Artist Gallery empowers and supports visionary female artists working in diverse media while providing an artistic experience, support and guidance for the collector of art. What is exciting about Roaring Artist Gallery, whose doors opened in September, 2020, is they support and represent exclusively women artists who, through their practice and work, are “opening conversations about women’s topics.” Roaring Artist Gallery is also seeking to make some changes of the dismal numbers of women artists represented on major museum walls. Of the 18 prominent art museums in the United States, a survey by the Public Library of Science found that of the over 10,000 artists represented in permanent collections, 87% were male and 85% were white. Thankfully there is a shift as women, artists of color those from the LGBTQ community are gaining consistent attention. Roaring Artist Gallery is helping to bring awareness of this disparity of representation. This collaborative effort with Roaring Artist Gallery and their team, individual artists and collectors are poised to “make some changes.”
Late this summer Roaring Artist Gallery curated the exhibition: “Awakening and Furor.” Conceived by Bradford Osborne and the Roaring Artist Gallery team, the show is response to current events including the recent overturning of Roe vs Wade. “From the handprints in ancient cave art to Artemisia Gentileschi’s Judith Slaying Holofernes, Louise Bourgeois to Guerilla Girls, one thing has always been true: As long as there has been art, women have used it to fight for their rightful space, to respond to the injustices of the world around them to ROAR in powerful ways that cannot be denied. Right now, we are writing history. Through art, we are fighting for our rightful space. This exhibition is a place for them, women artist to Roar!
And it was my honor to be the juror for this remarkable and important show. There is approximately 50 works by 29 female artists from across the United States through. Each prospective artist submitted works that spoke about women’s rights through the female experience and visual vocabulary of the artistic expression. It was pure joy to experience and contemplate each and every work. For this exhibition, awards were granted. Bradford Osborne chose Best in Show and I, chose the Juror Award. As a recipient of the Juror Award, I offered to use this platform to celebrate the artist whose paintings truly moved me on so many levels…she is Lucy Pike.
True to the format of this show, let’s journey together through one of her two submissions, titled, “To be a woman” 30×40 ink on primed canvas. Just a side note, as the juror, as I initially went through the submitted works, I didn’t look at titles. I wanted the visual expression to engage with me without outside influences of the title or other information provided by the artist. I wanted the depth and breadth of the work to speak its “poetry” through its medium and elements. For Pike’s painting, the title, “To Be A Woman,” fits beautifully given the mission of this exhibition.
For this show, Artists were asked to submit work that “speaks to women’s rights and issues” As women with diverse experiences, our perspectives and viewpoints of “women’s rights and issues” is as diverse as there are women. As a juror and a spectator to these works of art, I too bring my own viewpoint and perspective about women’s rights and issues, what aspect is most resonant to me. Personally what always surfaces when I think about women’s rights is juxtaposed with “constraint.” To be open and frank, I have been trying to break through constraints all of my adult life. Cultural and family expectations, women’s roles, personal constraints, my own self-limiting beliefs, systems of patriarchy.
This is why Pike’s painting so immediately spoke to me. So let’s take a closer look at the work.
Pike’s painting is an abstract work. Abstraction is art which does not imitate or refer directly to the appearance of objects in the world. Abstract art was born at the start of the 20th century—we see it pioneered through the art movements Fauvism, Cubism, and Expressionism. It is known for its freedom use and experimentation of color, shapes and the subject; Abstraction liberates the artist from the restraint of artistic traditions, or strict rules of creating art.
The painting “To be a Woman” is a somersault of curvilinear shapes layered with hues of pinks and reds that appear to seep into the canvas. The multiple layers of what appears to be thinly applied colors, create deepening hues of maroons and purples, embracing one of the curves is a sweep of goldenrod yellow, it appears like a crescent moon peeking into the rounded brushstrokes of maroons and reds and pinks. We see this golden rod yellow towards the center of the circular shape, its shape is more of a bright squared-shaped patch. The overall work is enlivened tiny tributaries of running color that seeps into the canvas.
What we see is visually expressed as feminine, delicate yet bold, with a sense of strength or perhaps fortitude; all the parts of me, aspects of a woman. I think another reason I was drawn to this work, it reminded me of another abstract painter from mid-to late 20th century; Lee Krasner
Krasner said, “I like the canvas to breathe and be alive. To be alive is the point.” Krasner boldly pushed abstraction forward. In her painting “Gaea, titled after the Earth goddess of the ancient Greeks, we experience through broad, sweeping strokes of paint, the rush of color, rhythm; though the painting is devoid of content of a figure, Krasner expresses a spirit of free invention. Her gestural, thick strokes demonstrate the way Krasner used her whole body to create the abstract curved shapes from nature. In both works we, the viewer, experience the female experience.
Now that you have some insight into Lucy Pike through the lens of her work, my interpretation and looking experience; join me in a conversation with the artist. Let’s listen through her voice the spaces she explores, she navigates as woman, as a mother and the ways her artistic practice creates a framework of her examination of the female experience and engagement with the natural world. Also joining me is Katie Bradford Osborne who with her spirited activism is helping to change the ways art is represented.