Though her student work was well received she found it unfulfilling, and for a short time abandoned the fine arts. She worked briefly as a commercial artist in Chicago before moving to Texas to teach. During the summer of 1915, O’Keeffe took classes at the Teachers College of Columbia University in South Carolina, and there began her re-entry into the world of painting. Teaching in South Carolina was Arthur Dow, a specialist in Oriental Art. Dow’s interest in non-European art helped O’Keeffe move away from the forms she had found so stifling in her previous studies.
Falk attended a teacher’s college where she studied both painting and drawing at UBC. Not only was Gracie Falk a painter, but she later became a sculptor, installation and performance artist as well. She was inspired by the elements of everyday life such as fruit, shoes, women’s clothing, reading a book, eggs, and many other things (“Underrated Canadian artist: Gathie Falk”). She found the simplicity of life beautiful, and that it should be magnified and not taken for granted. Many of her works tend to hold feminine and masculine elements in a unique, serious, and charming way.
The second artists in the “Transformation” episode was Cindy Shierman. She was a photographer who took mainly self portraits. She said she liked taking photographs of herself looking like different characters. She never named her portraits so that everyone had a chance to see it differently. The reason she took pictures of herself was because of her “Cindy Book” she had, which was all family snapshots where she would circle herself in the photograph.
Her artwork is about her life and the experiences and obstacles she went through due to her accident, culture, fantasies and bisexuality. She painted herself with no emotion on her face because she painted the way she used to see herself on a mirror, but she always painted herself wearing Mexican clothing, colorful hair ornaments and leaves representing life. On almost all of her paints she had plants which represent life, animals as cats or monkeys which represent promiscuity and in her case, her desire to become a mother. She had an obsession with fertility and babies. So she painted herself image when she had one of their miscarriages.
Amy Marcy Cheney Beach (September 5, 1867-December 27, 1944) She was an American composer and pianist. She was the first successful American female composer of large-scale art music. Early Years She was born in Henniker, New Hampshire. A child prodigy, she began formal piano lessons with her mother at the age of six, and a year later started giving public recitals. In 1875, her family moved to Boston, where they were advised to enter her into a European conservatory.
All of her paintings were from personal experiences such as her marriage, miscarriages and her numerous operations. Out of Kahlo’s 143 paintings 55 are self portraits. Over her bed was a mirror so she could see herself and this was how she produced the self portraits. I admire the way which she paints her portraits as she never tries to beautify herself as many would, in fact she seems to make herself appear uglier. ‘They thought I was a surrealist, but I wasn’t, I never painted my dreams, I painted my reality’.
In the book, Girl with a Pearl Earring written by Tracy Chevalier, art plays a big role, because throughout the book both of the main characters help each other through their artistic abilities. Throughout the book, Griet’s master, Johannes Vermeer, learns a lot of new information from his maid, which helps him improve his paintings for the better. One day, Johannes Vermeer was painting a picture of his patron’s wife, and as Griet was doing her duties in the studio, she found one change that she would like to do in the painting. She waited for her master, to make the change in the picture, but he didn’t, so Griet “decided she would have to make change herself” (Chevalier 133). Griet thought that if she made the change it would make the picture more interesting and better.
At first glance of any of Kahlo’s artwork, her portraits are very real but yet dreamlike. In a sense, the way she creates her pieces of work always display what is revolving around her life whether it is her husband, her fruit, or surprisingly dealing with her many medical illnesses. It is easy to decipher her artworks from other artists of the same time because of her stern black eyes, her traditional Mexican headdress and her ever -famous one eyebrow. Even as she creates her mirror image she evokes her inner
Frida Kahlo was born on July 6, 1907, in Coyocoán, Mexico City, Mexico. She is regarded as one of the greatest artists in Mexico. Kahlo began painting after she was severely injured in a traffic accident. After this she started to write self portraits. She became famous for her amazing paintings.
The admiration everyone held for the garden shows what women were capable of doing at those time—that they never gave up. Another example where Walker praises women is in the essay "Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self." In this beautiful piece of writing, she describes a childhood experience she had when her brother shot her with a BB gun and wounded her eye; this bought down her self-esteem and destroyed her confidence. At the end, however, Walker opens up her eyes and sees that she truly is beautiful no matter what. Her purpose is to show that every woman is beautiful