Unlocking Women's Art
Art for sale from £80.00
Price: £19.99
ISBN: 9781913641368
Buy your copy here
Aurora Metro and Books on The Rise, in Richmond, are hosting an exhibition dedicated to women’s art, open for view from 11th Nov to 24th Dec 2023.
In total, 13 painters and one potter are showcasing their work, some of them for the first time. The official opening will coincide with the launch of a new book by the same title by P. L. Henderson, on Sat. 18th Nov. at 3pm, published by Aurora Metro / Supernova Books. Over 50 artworks will be shown, including paintings and ceramics.
Kit Young, one of the selected painters, said “it’s very difficult for women to have a voice in the art world. It has been over a thousand years of male domination. We’re all very grateful that we have this opportunity to have an exhibition so that we can show local people what we can do.”
Another of the artists, Ruth Strupinski, who curated the exhibition, pointed out how all the participants are “quite timid” about their work. “This theme is about women’s art and us being unlocked, as it were, into the public view. This is a wonderful opportunity for us to be here doing that”. As potter Maria Murtagh pointed out “a pot’s not really finished until it’s living in someone else’s house”.
About the book Unlocking Women’s Art by P. L. Henderson
Discover the historic, contemporary, and global landscapes of female painters in Unlocking Women’s Art. Challenge your existing views of women artists and look beyond Eurocentric ideas to learn about brilliant Indigenous and global artists of the past. Includes over 20 interviews with contemporary painters, providing fascinating insights into their practices, themes, and personal motivation. Full colour with dozens of new and original images of the featured women artists’ work.
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About the Artists
Ariane Caulder
Ariane is a local artist who likes to work in varied media - oil, acrylic, gouache and pastel. She is a qualified art teacher and also completed a degree in graphic design.
Beata Lewandowska
Beata started her artistic journey in 2019 at Richmond Art College, where she learned a wide range of creative skills like ceramics, digital art, printing, and art history. She's an adventurous artist who loves exploring new ideas and techniques, especially using oil paints.
Caroline Green
Caroline lives and works in Twickenham after travelling extensively throughout her career. Having experimented with various media her current work is predom-inantly in acrylic and pastel; she works quickly and particularly loves the immediacy of pastel.
Caroline Painting
After a career in the city and raising children, Caroline decided to learn to paint and study art seven years ago, enrolling in a wide variety of art classes at the RHACC in Richmond. She enjoys experimenting with different media and integrating her imagination into her artwork. Caroline takes inspiration from her travels and local surroundings, but she also has a keen interest in portraiture.
Kirstine Chaffey
Kirstine has been painting for 30 years and exhibited in a variety of exhibitions and galleries. Her most recent show was in the Duchesses Gallery in 2018 in Belvoir Castle. She has also sold paintings to Paul Smith. Kirstine’s work is bold and colourful and during the past few summers she has spent time painting outside in local green areas such as Syon Park and Kew Gardens.
Pat Astley Cooper
She is a museum curator and has spent most of her working life looking at and showing other people’s work. Her grandmother was an illustrator and portrait painter so the ‘itch’ to draw and paint has always been there. A full-time job and family left little time to do this but now she can, and she finds it life-enhancing and absorbing. Pat likes to experiment with different styles but prefers to simplify and abstract images and use colour imaginatively.
Teresa Vanneck-Surplice
Teresa Vanneck-Surplice is a painter, sculptor, artist, poet, author and teacher. A painter of oils and acrylics, Teresa's book 'Women, War and Peace' contains artwork, poetry and pictures of her sculptures - some done as a child while she watched as World War II raged around her home near Biggin Hill Airport, the epicentre of the war.
Ruth Strupinski
Ruth is a local artist with a degree in Mural Design. She paints in various media and has a particular fondness for collage. She was an art teacher in a local school for many years and also teaches mosaics, finding it a very relaxing craft to explore colour and texture.
Fontein Buchan
Fontein lives locally in Richmond. She is a mixed media artist specialising in paper, textiles, metals and soft sculpture.
Pauline Withers Born
​Pauline Withers-Born has been playing around with drawing and painting all her life but only recently begun to take her work more seriously. A current theme in her work is to explore subverting the “male gaze” and allowing space for images of women as they are. She is also interested in the internal experience of being a woman whose body doesn’t conform to norms of female acceptableness.
Liz Bryant
Liz is a landscape architect who has done various courses at (Richmond Adult College) in recent years, reigniting a love for textures and colour not explored since doing Art 'O' level. Themes vary, but her predominant interest is in landscapes and how humans interact with them. Her style is semi-abstract, avoiding explicit representation in favour of dream-like colours and finishes.
Kit Young
Kit worked as a darkroom printer making high quality photographs for exhibition, advertising and fashion photographers. She took up painting as a hobby and was self-taught for several years before attending art classes at Richmond Adult College. Her work is mainly abstract landscape and still life along with some abstract express-ionism. She enjoys working with colour, form, texture and composition.
Maria Murtagh
Maria studied fine arts but was happy to find her spiritual home in ceramics. She loves Chinese, Japanese and Korean ceramics and is inspired by Moon Jars and large serving bowls and platters. Each piece she makes is unique, dec-orated with stoneware glazes and lines from her favourite poets. She has exhibited with CPA, the Society of Women Artists, London Potters, and Ealing and West London Art group.
Kate Strupinski
Kate Strupinski is a London based illustrator and artist with an MA Central Saint Martin’s School of Art. She works predominantly with mixed media, layering paint, print, typography and the drawn line. Themes vary but the common thread is a pers-onal response to the subject, using both recog-nisable and abstract elements to convey more of a feeling of the subject than a literal repre-sentation.
