Creative Lessons from Women Artists
Seven wise lessons applicable to any creative practice.
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Happy International Women’s Day!
I’ve been doing a lot of reading, listening, and thinking related to Tove Jansson over the last couple of months. I thought by now an essay would have formed, but currently I’m still in the “gathering” phase. Taking things in, sitting with them, letting them lead to something else.
As I do this, one of the things that I keep thinking about his how we deepen our understanding of something, how we sink into a topic. I think of all the scholars who are the leading experts in a field, who have a singular focus and expertise, whether it’s on an idea, an organism, a person, a concept. The more you focus on one subject, the more you realize that it’s actually not singular. You start to find new connection points. You build a web, a constellation, and it grows, expands. Like the universe, curiosity can make your world of focus feel endless.
“It is simply this: do not tire, never lose interest, never grow indifferent—lose your invaluable curiosity and you let yourself die. It's as simple as that.”
- Tove Jansson, Fair Play
If you’re curious enough, you can spend a lifetime digging into one single thing. Yet most of us scan through like a thousand things (or more) in one day, never really getting a sense of, well… much anything.
To dig deep requires an active form of resistance. To say, “no I refuse to abide by this expectation of being a content-churning-machine and a content-consuming-machine.” That usually doesn’t come with quick money, or growth, or fame, or even cultural currency. We’re expected to stay in that cycle. Digital, dopamine-driven culture means as that as cultural consumers, we’re quickly onto the next thing. We don’t even take the time to truly appreciate what we’re seeing, reading, and listening to. Next, next, next.
Let me tell you: this makes it VERY HARD for anyone who makes creative work for a living. We feel that the attention span of the people we’re trying to speak to is zapped. Not to mention, so is ours. Even when we intellectually know better, we feel like we need to keep up with that content churning machine or otherwise we’ll somehow lose any sense of relevancy.
“More, more, more!” shouts the dopamine-dependent culture. And so, we often exhaust ourselves by attempting to do “more, faster, better”—or MFB as
calls it. We demand of ourselves to make new work, not because we want to, but simply because we feel it’s what we “should” do.I often feel a real push to constantly be producing something new, and I know that I’m not alone. You end up feeling that you haven’t done enough, that you haven’t kept up. That’s exhausting, and it usually leads to feeling pretty burnt out, which is why “you don’t have to make new work” is a pep talk that I regularly have with fellow creative friends and acquaintances. We all need to hear it.
I am not advocating for stagnating in our work. It’s good to create new things! But maybe we need to give ourselves a little bit of a break too? Our old work still has value and it will resonate for someone who hasn’t seen it before.
With that in mind, I decided that to celebrate International Women’s Day, I’d dig back into some of my old work. Since I’m often fascinated by the artists who came before, and what kind of things they did in their creative practice, I figured I’d pull from my archives so that we could all enjoy some creative lessons from amazing, inspiring women artists.
Some of these are from my Women’s Wisdom Project, and a few are from a little collaboration that I did with
some years back, featuring some of the women he had featured in his book Daily Rituals: Women at Work.One thing is sure, they’re all women who were captivated and fascinated by their work. They dug (and some still do) deep.
Enjoy!
-Anna
We are more capable than we think
“At the end of the day, we can endure much more than we think we can,” said Frida Kahlo, who knew a thing or two about what it meant to struggle. Not to mention, knew a thing or two about what the outside world gave (or didn’t give her) credit for, like when a newspaper article once referred to her as the “wife of the master mural painter” who “gleefully dabbles in art.”
Prepare intensely
Even when creative work flows, when we hit that stride that’s somewhere between magical and mystical, it is on the back of countless hours of preparation. If we don’t lay the ground work, we can’t let go and let serendipity take over. Nina Simone spent countless hours not just practicing, but understanding the spaces where she played. She would spend the afternoon before a show in a music hall, to get an understanding of where people would sit, how close to the stage they would be, what the lighting would be like, where the microphones would be placed. Simone took in every single detail, so that “by the time I got on stage I knew exactly what I was doing.”
Question everything
“To create, one must first question everything.” - Eileen Gray
We know how this story goes: woman works hard, creates incredible groundbreaking work, yet goes entirely under the radar. At the very least, Eileen Gray, a furniture designer and architect, eventually found fame and respect in her 90s, but she deserves so much more celebration.
Of particular note is her masterpiece, the seaside villa, E-1027, which architect Le Corbusier decided to desecrate by painting murals on the walls without asking for her permission. As he said, “I admit the mural is not to enhance the wall, but on the contrary, a means to violently destroy [it].” Today the villa has been restored, and some of those murals are still there, which yes, does feel a little questionable, although the one in the living room is hidden from view, to honor Gray’s original vision.
Be relentlessly curious
As Currey writes in his book, Susan Sontag “succeeded, in large degree, thanks to her seemingly boundless energy.” That energy led to the consumption of books, film, conversations—essentially an insatiable curiosity of everything that was around her. That curiosity helped to shape her world, and her broad amount of references. If we stay curious, we can do nothing but keep learning.
If you’re wanting to dive into Sontag’s work, the New York Public Library has this roundup of essays to start with.
We don’t need permission
“I just decided when someone says you can't do something, do more of it.” - Faith Ringgold
I love this quote so much. Today Ringgold in her 90s and is known for her “story quilts,” stunning works of textile art. In fact Ringgold refers to them not as quilts but as paintings, a way to celebrate and elevate an art form that has so long been associated with domestic labor and women’s work and therefore—as you may have already guessed—does not always get the recognition that it deserves.
We don’t need anyone’s permission expect our own. And sometimes, maybe someone’s resistance to what they think we “should” be doing is the best permission of all.
Use art as relief
Art helps us to process, to heal, and who better to exemplify this than Yayoi Kusama. She checked herself into the Tokyo mental hospital in 1977 and she still lives there today, continually creating art as a way to fight her pain, anxiety, and fear. As she calls it, “art medicine.” A reminder that no matter where we are in our lives, we can all tap into this restorative element of art making.
Declare what you want
“You get whatever accomplishment you are willing to declare.” - Georgia O’Keeffe
A good reminder that we can’t wait for other people to define our success. I don’t think you need me to tell you about Georgia O’Keeffe, as she’s one of our more well-known and celebrated artists. But if you’re in need of creative inspiration I would point you in the direction of her watercolors. “O’Keeffe wrote in a letter to Alfred Stieglitz that “a stack of [this paper] almost a foot tall makes her feel downright reckless,” and you can see the glee in the watercolors that she made on that paper, like the nude self-portraits or the Evening Star series, where she seems to be reveling in the watercolor and the way it flows over that surface,” said Laura Neufeld, associate paper conservator at The Museum of Modern Art.
In other words: declare your accomplishments, and declare your glee.
Maybe just like that Frida Kahlo headline.
Want to learn more about women artists?
Check out my interview with Bridget Quinn, author of Broad Strokes: 15 Women Who Made Art and Made History (in that Order). And I highly recommend
’s The Great Women Artists newsletter.
Some upcoming Creative Fuel workshops + events
A reminder that next week we have our first session of Create+Engage next Wednesday. Micro-Media: The Power of Zines with Sarah “Shay” Mirk and Christina Appleberry, March 13, 5-6:30pm PT. Hosted on Zoom. It’s free to attend. Thank you so much for paid subscribers helping to bring this to life.
Creative Fuel Studio Sessions: I’ve been working at thinking of new creative ways to have offerings for you generous paid subscribers. We’ll be doing our first studio session later this month, a virtual creative happy hour of sorts. Mark your calendar for Thursday March 21, 2024, 5-6pm PT. This is totally experimental and we’ll see how it goes! I know that this time slot is not going to work for everyone, but let’s just give it a little test run and we’ll go from there. And now is a great time to snag a paid subscription if you want plan to attend.
DIVE: Seasonal Writing Group Spring 2024: this writing group is facilitated by
and under the general Creative Fuel umbrella. The Spring 2024 session still has some spots in it! It’s a cozy and supportive place, so if you want to make spring a season of writing, there’s more info here.
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Thank you, thank you, thank you
This is amazing! Do you have any plans to print the Tove Jannsen portrait. I LOVE her - and this is just perfect.