Artist’s statement

The clarity, simplicity, and forthrightness of the contour line drawn with pen and ink has fascinated me for six decades. There is so much to be said in black and white! Over the course of my life, I have dabbled with oil painting, watercolors, lithography, etching, charcoal, digital drawing (Procreate), collage, floral design, relief printing, and pastels. But nothing, nothing, nothing brings me as much pleasure as drawing with pen and ink.

I first became attracted to pen and ink drawings the year after I graduated from high school when I worked for an engineering and surveying firm. I was fascinated by the contour maps and survey maps that the drafters drew with technical pens. Soon afterwards, I bought my first quill pen and a bottle of India ink, which launched a lifetime of love for the simple black line. As a young person in the 1970s, I appreciated the black and white work of Aubrey Beardsley and Rockwell Kent, finding much joy in studying how each used white spaces and black lines. But it was the nascent feminist movement of the 1970s, and the art that emerged from this movement, that particularly caught my attention. In 1976, I became lovers with a photographer who also loved black and white, and who encouraged me to use my art for the feminist revolution that we both were certain was just ahead. The revolution needs art, she would often say. And so I started to publish my pen and ink drawings in the feminist and alternative press. At the time, feminist newsletters, magazines, and newspapers were printed on offset presses or copy machines. Color was too expensive for many publications, as were halftone photographs. Thus a need for simple black and white line drawings existed, and I happily supplied my work to local, regional, and a couple of national feminist publications. I also sold cards and drawings at women’s music and cultural festivals both locally and nationally.

As for subject matter, little has changed over the course of my life: women and nature have been my subjects since I was a small child. I have lived in the country all of my adult life, first in North Carolina, then in Iowa, and now in Alaska. In my work, I am inspired by the landscapes, phases of the moon, stars, the aurora borealis, rivers and lakes, wild and domestic animals, and plants of all kinds. But my main subject matter in my serious work has always been drawings of women. I have drawn women working, women making love, women sleeping, women dancing, women worrying, women crying, women thinking, women grieving, and most recently, a series of a woman dying.

My subject matter has also been greatly influenced by the feminist art movement. My first lover—the photographer—gave me the book Women Artists: 1550-1950 by Ann Sutherland Harris and Linda Nochlin (1976). The book was the print companion to the first international exhibit of women artists, and it shook the art world—and me—to the core. Through the book, I was introduced to more influencers: Romaine Brooks; Artemsia Gentilisci, and Mary Cassett were of particular interest to me. It was the subject matter of these artists that drew me, as their art also focuses on women.

In my late thirties, I began attending art school at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, studying painting and printmaking. I was drawn to printmaking in particular because I wanted to make art that was reproducible and thus affordable for working class people. I had hoped to transfer my skills in pen and ink to printed works. However, professors there discouraged me from doing pen and ink drawings, dismissing this art form as not “real art.” Sexism was rampant in the UNCG art department. Even though the school had originally been a women’s college, after it went co-ed in the 1960s, patriarchal forces had taken over. I felt stifled and silenced, unable to do the kind of art that I loved: pen and ink drawings and illustrations for the feminist and alternative press. After taking a required course in sociology, I abandoned my dream of becoming an artist and changed my major to sociology and women’s studies.

My life then took an unexpected turn, as shortly thereafter I moved from my farm in North Carolina to Iowa, where I went to graduate school. After graduation with my PhD in Sociology, I came to Alaska where I worked for seventeen years as a professor of sociology and women, gender, and sexuality studies. Unfortunately, in 2020 I lost my university job due to COVID and the Alaska state budget cuts. This event broke my heart, but it also liberated me to be able to once again pursue art as a life path.

Currently, I am an MFA student in Art at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF). I am studying drawing, painting, and printmaking, and plan to create a graphic novel for my thesis project. I have taken several online and in-person cartooning and graphic novel development courses, and have found that my previous experience with contour line drawing is welcomed in these genres. In contrast to my earlier experience in art school, my UAF professors encourage me to draw with ink, and to pursue my favorite subjects. I am once again embracing my personal and professional identity as an artist, and I feel blessed to be able to do this work.