What began in 1981 and continues annually, celebrations overflow every March during National Women’s Month.
For example, one such company marking the importance and celebrating women is Hershey. Hershey is actively changing the label for their SHE campaign. The highlighting of “she” in the Hershey logo on the cover of chocolates is super cute. The campaign from a media company, Skimm, offers audio, video, and written content to commemorate female history creators.
The theme for International Women’s Day 2022 is “gender equality today for a sustainable tomorrow.” Following this, I decided I wanted to celebrate Women’s History Month by sharing fascinating female artists alive today. I know that you may be tired of talking about how creative women are (although you shouldn’t be). Since there is still a long way to go to acknowledge all their contributions, be patient, and enjoy the artwork with me.
Here are the inspirational female artists who are changing the art world right now:
Helen Downie
Helen Downie is a painter based in London. Despite her lack of formal education, global fashion brands such as Gucci and Vogue expressed their love for her Instagram portfolio. She was discovered only 2 years after she started “unskilled illustration.” Downie was invited by Italian fashion house Gucci to create a series of portraits, which led to her features in articles, such as The New York Times, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, W Magazine, and other publications. Downie’s vision and unique style of painting attracted industry heavyweights. Her dreamy artworks were usually inspired by the innocence of the children, which take viewers to a child-like wonderland.
Vivienne Westwood
Vivienne Westwood is an English fashion designer, who created her own rebellious aesthetics within her fashion line. She is a mold-breaker, as we see from her interview where she states, “I’ve constantly tried to provoke people into thinking afresh and for themselves, to escape their inhibitions and programming.” Westwood has built a very popular fashion brand with numerous separate fashion lines, accessories, and perfume lines from stores around the world. Her work not only focused more on activism and dealing with issues such as climate change, civil liberties, and nuclear disarmament, but she continues to show unique “punky” styles that mix and match the past and future.
Kara Walker
Kara Walker is an American contemporary artist. She uses a silhouette of black cutting paper to portray cruel and tragic scenes, while also having a fairytale look with an antique Victorian style of art. The shadowy black silhouette is based on the true, dark history of the U.S. and the experiences of African Americans. Walker’s work consists of only black and white, making viewers feel like watching a shadow puppet show. This clear contrast also imprints the impression of the separation of the Black-and-white community. She captures social issues, such as racism, hate crimes, and gender-based violence through her silhouettes, but they do not beg viewers for sympathy. Walker once stated, “The silhouette says a lot with very little information, but that’s what the stereotype does.” The silhouette cleverly talks some sense into the audience.
Doniella Davy
Doniella Davy is an American makeup artist. Although she was already a successful artist as Half Magic Beauty’s co-founder and creative director, she made an even bigger name for herself since she took a role in the HBO Max series Euphoria as the lead makeup artist. Davy mentioned in W Magazine that the core of the makeup in Euphoria is “emotional glam” added, “The makeup needs to visually communicate the characters’ emotional states of mind; the looks give more insight into that character at that moment. That always comes first, before the look.” Her emotional glam makeup fulfills viewers’ wants and needs. Now that season 2 of the series has just ended, many fans are waiting to see how her artwork will return for season 3.
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Besides the great artists in the textbooks, a lot of women artists living in the present are leading the art world. The best thing about those artists who live in the same period as us is that we can directly hear their voices. What a privilege that is!