‘It gives me hope’ Nine inspiring women artists who changed our world
This series by French photographer Chrystel Lebas looks at the archival of Sir Edward James Salisbury, who was the director and botanist at Kew Gardens 100 years ago. He was interested in plant life around the British Isles and Chrystel was interested in retracing Salisbury’s footsteps.
I love this work because it’s a panoramic print, shot using a panoramic camera. So, when you look at it, it’s fully immersive. It fills up your entire line of view and you have a sense of the dampness and the smell; the sort of wild garlic that she’s captured in this image. It’s something that is so provocative in invoking these sensations. But what it also does, and this is another reason why I really like it, is that in retracing Salisbury’s steps 100 years later Chrystel has captured the change in our climate, the change in our landscape.
This artwork spans 100 years. Future Library began in 2014 – in Norway, a forest was planted which will supply the paper for an anthology of books to be printed in 2114. Every year of the project, one writer will contribute a text which will be held in trust, remaining unread and unpublished until the 100 years has passed.
As a publisher, there is something beautiful yet unsettling (in a way that I can’t quite describe), about the fact these manuscripts will remain unpublished for a century and will only ever be read by people that don’t exist yet. As is the case with our planet, future generations will inherit what we leave behind. It challenges ideas of what it means to be an author, a publisher and a human being. At a time when our future feels so uncertain, Paterson’s work is trusting, optimistic and hopeful.
I love Ilana Halperin’s Field Studies (from Kilchattan Bay to Hawk’s Neb). The colours and shapes in the paintings are gorgeous and the story behind them reminds me of the nature on my doorstep that also brings me joy. Having been prescribed nature by my GP a few years ago, I trudged the same path from my flat in Leith on my ‘stupid walk for my stupid mental health’ every day, so the idea of tracking your local environment over time feels very familiar.
It is more meaningful for me that these are watercolour paintings by a woman artist living in Scotland. Because they’re smaller than other artworks in the galleries, you naturally get closer to them. And in the same way Ilana Halperin feels closer to me as a woman who loves art and nature, also living in Scotland.
I love this painting for many reasons, not only because of how it pulls you in but also because of the artist. Mabel Pryde, known as ‘Prydie’ is a woman after my own heart. She knew she wanted to be an artist and bravely left home – and Scotland – to study at a young age. Becoming the youngest female pupil at her art school, stories about her activities there reveal a huge sense of energy and fun, such as driving a flock of geese into the life studio for her fellow-pupils to draw. That sense of personality comes through in her work.
In this painting you can tell she enjoyed planning and creating a dynamic sense of space. I also love the play of light through the windows into the three spaces of the painting. It’s light, bright and uplifting. Best of all, I love the sense of collaboration with the two people represented – her daughter Nancy, and her son Kit – whom Mabel paid for posing.
I have picked a new acquisition, Bacchanale by Olive Carleton Smyth, because it is full of wild, exuberant colour and action, but also has incredible minute details – the dancers’ clothes have flamboyant spot and chevron prints and even the gold musical instruments are covered in tiny engraved patterns. It is full of symbols associated with Bacchus, God of wine, theatre and festivity, including gold pinecones, flower garlands and the thyrsus, a wand wreathed in ivy. Olive Carleton Smyth may have been inspired by her love of the stage, as theatre and dance inspired by Classical mythology was popular in the early 20th century.
Described by a contemporary as ‘small, fast talking and tweed suited’, she was an important figure in the Glasgow art world for 35 years but is now little known. A brilliant and versatile Glasgow Girl and an effective and inspiring teacher – who better to celebrate on International Women’s Day?
This reminds me of a game I used to play with my granny and I think that is why I was drawn to it. The colours make me feel calm and I love the way they seem to flicker on the canvas, almost like moving leaves.
Margaret Mellis was Scottish and lived in Cornwall in her mid to late 20s, spending time with artists including Barbara Hepworth. I love to imagine what their life would have been like and if those experiences informed this painting, which she painted in 1964, aged 50. I always return to it and spend time with it, no matter how many times I visit the gallery. It gives me such a sense of hope.
I came to see the exhibition Celebrating 40 Years of Scotland’s Photography Collection with a community group and one of the members was particularly struck by this work. It was amazing to see her connect with the work and the way it made her feel. It felt meaningful to her that the love hearts on the head scarf were similar to a love heart necklace she was wearing.
The sitter is a contemporary woman in Scotland. The series explores people who are from the Sikh, Hindu and Muslim faiths and represents their beliefs but also them as contemporary women. There’s a lot of fear about the ‘other’, which is something we can feel in our current political context.
I remember viewing Tanning’s painting; Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, as a small child and feeling fear and excitement. A lone little girl facing supernatural horrors but she stands strong – holding her ground.
This lithograph, The First Peril, evokes those same feelings. A girl or woman with a snake draped over her head whose candle illuminates the other side of a door that is also an open book. There’s danger, and curiosity and the potential for enlightenment and having courage to move into an unknown space.
Conserving Phoebe Anna Traquair’s illuminated manuscript has been a rewarding experience. Traquair, a self-taught artist, was remarkably prolific, working in a wide range of media from manuscript illumination to mural painting. Overtime, some of the paint layers in these delicate works on parchment had become loose. I used small amounts of adhesive with a fine brush, working under a microscope to ensure the work’s stability for travel and display.
Making Traquair’s work accessible to the public honours her legacy as a pioneering figure in Scotland’s Arts and Crafts movement and allows us to all celebrate her perseverance and creativity as a self-taught artist who broke barriers in a male-dominated field.
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