On View: Women Painting Women Haynes Galleries, TN

Opening today at Haynes Gallery in Nashville, Tennessee is the group show, "Women Painting Women :  A Room of One's Own." It features over six dozen images of women as an aesthetic subject, as interpreted by 24 female artists.  “These artists all have their own ideas of what it means to be a woman today,” says Alia El-Bermani, one of the co-founders of the Women Painting Women blog, which inspired this event. “Some have used themselves as the main subject, others have chosen to represent their friends and daughters. No matter who the sitter may have been, the images cumulatively present universal ideas on what it is to be human.”

The exhibit takes its title from a famous essay by Virginia Woolf which maintains that a woman "needs personal space, equal opportunity to her male counterparts, and poetic license to create art."  In keeping with that idea, it is a showcase of work only by female artists - an attempt to offset the typical under-representation of women artists in other gallery shows.  “If we agree that women today — and historically — are making compelling works that represent the female figure, and yet those works are getting less recognition and exposure than similar works by their male peers, that tells me that there is a need to champion these works and the artists who create them,” says El-Bermani. This show is just one of six opening over the next few weeks and around the globe which addresses this subject.

For owner Gary Haynes, such a show is a perfect fit for his gallery.  “(These artists) are helping redefine the feminine influence and muse in contemporary art" says Haynes," . . . and they continually produce insightful and novel work.”  The exhibition promises to be a blockbuster event, and the gallery is delighted that these women have found, at least temporarily, a space of their own within its walls.