WOMEN RISE
A lifetime of Wondering.
and the color Pink
When I was small, the only woman that was ever talked about
was Eleanor Roosevelt...and only because
she was the President's wife. That was in 1940. Throughout my youth I was told
that Art doesn't matter. This was a
favorite saying of my Father. You can't make a living doing Art. For many women
this has been so. This was also true of many vocations of which women were not
encouraged to dream of aspirations owned by the world of men.
In my life time, much has changed. astronaut Sally Ride and her space shuttle Challenger, Senator Tammy Duckworth, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elaine de Kooning. They overcame great odds in their quest for a place in the Sun...
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| Elaine de Kooning self portrait |
My daughters have encouraged me to see the movie "Barbie". I hate pink. It is not on the color wheel of my art world. The primaries, Red, Yellow, Blue. The secondary colors, orange, green and purple. Power colors in the corporate world are: black, red, and white. Little girls are from the time they are born are inculcated with the idea of pretty pink. Little boys are blue, a primary. It is always blue no matter how much white is added to the hue, it remains blue. Red on the other hand, when white is added becomes Pink. It loses all potency...it is diluted from the power of color.
Now, at the Oceanside Museum of Art in Oceanside CA we have an exhibition which documents the many phases of the feminine. A woman's lifetime documented in the paintings by Deena Altman. "Female Rising" It is gut wrenching, the power of her painted stages of the feminine mystic was for me overwhelming...especially the portrait of "Sweet Sixteen". This phase is when the "I" of being becomes subservient to our culture determined by the world of men. . Her shoulders are slumped forward, her dress a faded shade of pink. This image has background images a small girl painted in the color of pink. This cultural bias is still in full Pink Bloom
I advocate the color for my sex to be Yellow, Gold, and Orange...the colors of great power. The Sunflower grows wild. This is what little girls should be surrounded with, the wildness of self, growing unbounded with the Sunpower in a blue sky...energy which makes our Planet Earth alive. Women in the Arts are now becoming a driving force for the Arts of all genres. We do give birth with passion and physical strength for our art. We glory in our Wildness, and we are very golden living on the great color wheel.... of existence.
