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Last Spring, the PSA invited me to write about my experience being a woman and an artist.  They invited me to wonder and deeply consider the impact of my gender on my life and work.  What follows is the article I wrote for that issue of the Pastelagram.  I thank Jimmy Wright and Arlene Richman again, for including me in this special issue and encourage everyone to seek out the journal, read the other five entries and join the Pastel Society of America!

Reproduced from the.....
PASTELAGRAM
Journal of the Pastel Society of America
Summer/2017
 
The Wordless Canvas/Diana Sanford

     Many years ago, in a creative writing class, I wrote a story the instructor chose to read aloud because he couldn’t tell if it was written by a man or a woman.    I remember being struck by that and wondering what it meant.  How relevant is it - to know the gender of the creator of a work of art?  Is that part of our way into a piece?  Is there content that transcends gender?  What role does gender play and how do we talk about it without stumbling onto one of the many mines in the field? 

Image:  “Suspended”, pastel, 12 x 14

     As I mulled over this topic in my typical circular, non-linear (female) fashion, one truth surfaced:  that there is more that connects us than divides us.  We encounter many of the same obstacles in the struggle to refine what is meaningful to us, define ourselves as artists and establish a career or find a market.  And, gender itself is not a binary system but a fluid landscape where male and female energies intermingle.

     The other truth:  that being female has everything to do with everything, surfaced right behind like a breaching humpback whale.  I was raised at a time, in a place and family, where women and men had prescribed roles.  Women had children and took care of a home and men provided.  Both roles had chains attached.  However, it was made clear to me, intentional or not, that men were better and more important and women were supposed to make sure they were taken care of.   Men were nurtured to search for a career identity from an early age.  Women’s identity was set for them as the helpmate and caretaker of the home and children.   Other options were not part of the conversation.   I’m grateful that this landscape has changed.  But as we all know and were recently reminded of...we have a long way to go.

     "Waiting for Godot", pastel, 12 x 14

 
     For me, not adopting a traditional role meant casting off expectations from near and far and discovering who I was through trial and much error.   I eventually went to art school, not because I thought I’d ever make a living at it, but because it was the only thing I really wanted to do and I figured I’d manage the necessities later.   Years later, I became a psychotherapist.  Both activities are all about process.  It’s interesting to me now, that for years I kept the two separate, afraid that if someone found out I was an artist, they wouldn’t take me seriously as a therapist, and visa-versa.  I felt like an imposter in both – maybe the legacy of being raised to be something else.  Eventually though, the two fields integrated and I continue to maintain a part-time practice, spend time in the studio and have developed a workshop, “Experiential Drawing and Painting” (JAM Session!) that draws from both.

     Both my grandmothers painted.  It was the gentle thing to do.  My paternal grandmother exposed me to pastels for the first time.  My father is still painting, at 93.  Oil became my primary medium after art school but I always switched back and forth, being refreshed by how the mediums influenced each other.  In recent years, pastel has become my primary medium due to its incredible versatility.  I think of pastel as pure pigment and when combined with various grounds, mediums and solvents, the options are infinite.  My work has also become less pre-determined and more spontaneous and pastels submit to the frequent changes of course in a way oil can’t because of the drying time.

 

     When I was heading off to art school, a male “friend” said to me:  “what makes you think you have something to say?”  Would he have said that to a man?  What he said haunted me for years because I didn’t know what I had to say.  I didn’t really start to paint until I realized I didn’t have to know - which is good, because I don’t like to know.   I like to invite the painting to speak and engage me in conversation and I like to respond without preconceived ideas of where we might end up.  At least until it becomes inevitable.  Is this open, wondering, receptive stance female?

     To succeed in anything we need a sense of our own power.  Power was all masculine to me growing up.  I remember distinctly in my 20’s, trying to understand what feminine power would be like, feel like and act like.  But painting wasn’t waiting for me after I sorted myself out.  Rather it sorted me out.  I was compelled to paint and credit the process of painting for giving me a more integrated sense of myself.   It’s ironic that women often have many words (we teach the children to speak) but we can lose our own voice amidst the words.  Maybe that’s why the wordless canvas can be a better vehicle.

     I was intrigued by Robert Hobbs’s article in “Women of Abstract Expressionism” (the hard cover catalog for the recent exhibition) about the use of metonym by Krasner, Mitchell and Frankenthaler,   rather than the metaphors more commonly used by the men of the movement.   My understanding is that a metonym is something that stands in for something else, rather than drawing a comparison, as with metaphors.  A painting, as a metonym, stands in for a place, feeling, memory, idea, span of time or even complex, interconnected themes.   The painting is not “like” something else but stands in, as a kind of short hand, for the thing.  It translates experientially and with immediacy whatever the thing is – known or unknown.  I’m not sure I’ve completely wrapped my mind around this notion yet it resonates with me.  I like the closeness of it.  The notion that the painting isn’t an interpretation but stands in for it – whatever it may be – very directly.  The women abstract expressionists that followed in the wake of the New York school may have influenced me the most.   An amazing group of women from both coasts who found a unique and very different expression than that of their male counter parts.  Except for a few notable names like those above, they were in large part forgotten.

“Reckoning”, pastel, 12 x 14            

     I never title paintings until they’re finished because I don’t know who they are until then and I’m often surprised when I step back far enough to discover them.   “Waiting for Godot’s” title came to me out of the blue and I had to remind myself of the play and all its meanings before realizing how well it fit as a metonym for the waiting state I’d been in after a significant experience.  The title for “Reckoning” presented itself in a similar way with the imagery of the painting standing in for an ominous sense of things to come.  

     “Falling Behind the Veil” began in landscape orientation, and then insisted on being divided into two portrait formats, and then the landscape retreated behind a veil as seen through gossamer curtains.  The piece then “stood in” for what felt like the division in our country and our connection to our place disappearing behind a veil like Avalon disappearing in the mist. 

      "Falling Behind the Veil", pastel, 18 x 25

     My advice to all artists and maybe women in particular:  don’t worry about having anything to say – just paint and what you have to say will present itself.  And, most of all, your gender has value and your value has nothing to do with your gender.

Diana Sanford is a Signature Member of the Pastel Society of America and the Northwest Pastel Society.  She holds a BA in Painting and a MS in Clinical Psychology.  A practicing artist and psychotherapist she teaches a unique workshop in experiential drawing and painting, “JAM SESSION!” (see www.dianasanford.com)  A four-time winner in Pastel 100 competitions including the Silver and Bronze, in 2016 her work was included in both the IAPS and PSA’s Exhibitions in NY and was selected to travel to the Butler Institute in Ohio.  She is also included in the recently published compilation book:  “Art Journey Abstract Painting:  A Celebration of American Art”