Drawn to Art: Tales of Inspiring Women Artists

As someone who challenged accept standards of beauty and represented the queer community, Laura Aguilar is one of the most influential Chicana photographers of her generation.

Tanya Aguiñiga is known for her community-based projects and activism that involve interactions at the border.

Emma Amos was a postmodern African-American painter and printmaker. She worked with political and feminist collectives throughout her career, creating colorful multi-media works that talked about her identity as a Black woman.

Chitra Ganesh was born in NY to Indian immigrant parents. She draws from Indian mythology, literature, and popular culture to reveal feminist and queer narratives from the past and to imagine new visions of the future.

Fiber artist and weaver Consuelo Jimenez Underwood is the daughter of migrant agricultural workers. In her richly textured creations, she weaves common threads of history and cultural resistance and affirmation.

Sister Gertrude Morgan saw art as way to convey her faith and spread the Word of God. She was equal parts musician, painter, and poet, expressions that both energized and helped share her sanctified journey.

Wendy Red Star reassesses misconceptions around Native identity from a distinctly feminist, Indigenous perspective.

Miriam Schapiro was a groundbreaking feminist artist whose collaborative project, Womanhouse, critiqued the misogyny of everyday life.

Barbara Jones-Hogu's groundbreaking prints spoke to the Black Power movement and the ideals of self-determination, unity, and Black pride in the 1960s and 1970s.

Her genre paintings of domestic scenes were filled with humor. Lilly was the breadwinner for the family, making and selling paintings, while her husband stayed home with the children.

Born to Mexican American parents and raised in a house of women, Judy Baca grew up proud of her heritage. She tells stories of underrepresented communities, giving voice to women, the working poor, LGBTQ+, people of color, and immigrants. 

Having witnessed the Vietnam War, Tiffany Chung hopes to illustrate the effect of war on people and tell a complete story. Chung traced her father’s wartime journey in search of those memories erased from historical records. She describes her works as “the protest against this politically driven historical amnesia.” 

Sonya Clark grew fond of handmade crafts stitching with her grandmother as a child and loved to bring stories into her art. One of her monumental works, inspired by the dishtowel used by the Confederate army to surrender, elicits thoughts about reparations, abolition, and freedoms for Black people. 

Sarah Goodridge grew up on her family’s farm, where she created her earliest pictures using a pin and birch bark, before moving to Boston. With her passion and hard work, she became one of the first American women to earn a living as a working artist.

Born in a farmworker family, Ester Hernandez saw her family and community as the main inspirations for her art. She became one of the leading female artists of El Movimiento, telling stories of women and empowering Chicana feminists through her transformative work. 

Despite facing discrimination, Loïs Mailou Jones had a successful career as an artist and as a professor at Howard University. She traveled around the world, to Paris, Haiti, and Africa for inspiration. Jones has become an important role model for African American artists. 

Jaune Quick-To-See Smith was born on the Flathead Indian Reservation in western Montana in 1940. As a child, she escaped her harsh world through books and the drawings her father made for her. Now, she uses her art to powerfully express her beliefs.

Nellie Mae Rowe was one of the first self-taught Black women to be widely celebrated for her art. After a childhood lost to hard labor and twice widowed, she dedicated herself to creating art. Her imaginative works are filled with joy, playfulness, and pride. 

Kay WalkingStick is the daughter of a Scotch-Irish mother and a Cherokee father, who encouraged her to learn  about her Indigenous roots. She finds inspiration in Native cultures, which encourages her to join patterns and landscapes in depicting her worldview. 

Augusta Savage fulfilled her dream of becoming an artist, winning fellowships and numerous awards throughout her life as a sculptor. Besides her own success, Savage dedicated her career in creating opportunities for Black artists.  

Anni Albers studied art at the innovative Bauhaus, where she discovered weaving. She fled Nazi Germany and became an influential teacher at the experimental Black Mountain College in North Carolina.

Born in 1898, Berenice Abbott discovered her gift for photography in Paris. When she returned home, she created iconic portraits of buildings and people in New York City, images that still move us to this day.

Carmen Herrera was born in Havana, Cuba, then lived in Paris before moving to New York City in 1952. She faced discrimination in the art world for being an immigrant and a woman and only found success late in life for her minimal, beautiful works.

Corita Kent joined a religious order after high school and became fascinated with screen printing. She would go on to be described as “the pop art nun who combined the sensibility of Andy Warhol with social justice,” and helped to bring a little more color to the world.

The daughter of a Haitian father and an Ojibwe mother Lewis overcame many obstacles before finding success as a sculptor in Rome, where her fame brought countless visitors to her studio.

Kay Sekimachi and her family were forced into a Japanese incarceration camp during WWII. There, she spent her time making art. After the war, she discovered weaving and her innovative practices and mastery of techniques earned her the sobriquet “the Weaver’s Weaver.”

Born in 1845, the American painter known for her depiction of flowers described herself as a “Garden-Thirsty Soul.” Her promising career was overshadowed by her marriage to a more famous artist. Her artworks remain unsurpassed in celebrating the beauty of the natural world.

When contemporary artist Mickalene Thomas was in art school, she couldn’t afford traditional materials and gravitated towards craft stores and the glitter and rhinestones within. Her paintings speak to female empowerment and of women of color owning and defining their own spaces.

Romaine Brooks suffered an abusive childhood but triumphed as an adult, embracing gender fluidity and her queer identity. Her fierce independence is inspiring to people today.