/artemisian
What is /artemisian?
Artemisian is a shrine and listing for female artists and creatives named after Artemisia Gentileschi.
Who is Artemisia Gentileschi?
Women Like Artemisia Gentileschi were not just rare, but revolutionary. In the 17th century, being a woman in the arts was about surviving the gatekeeping of guilds, patrons, and patriarchal norms. She was an Italian Baroque painter that was trained in her father's workshop because formal academies barely let women in. She learned the Baroque style, a style dominated by men like Caravaggio. But she didn't just mimic the men. She twisted the knife—literally. Her most famous painting is Judith Slaying Holofernes, and it depicts a biblical heroine beheading a general with a bold level of austerity, brutality, and control. This was deeply personal, as Artemisia had survived an assault, and her art reflected the fury—and the power she reclaimed through painting.
She used her canvas as a battlefield.
In doing so, she was one of the women in history pioneering the way for other female artists.
Artemisia's paintings often featured women from myths, allegories, and the Bible, including victims, suicides, and warriors. In an era when women had few opportunities to pursue artistic training or work as professional artists, Gentileschi was the first woman to become a member of the Accademia di Arte del Disegno in Florence. She is praised to this day as a woman brave enough to go against the grain, defying the expectations of female submission to pursue her passion.
What is this place for?
Art of all kinds (traditional, music, theater, etc.) has been primarily dominated by men for as long as art has existed, so this place exists as a shrine to the inspirational women of the past, present, and future, as well as a place to find other women artists to support or connect with! Simply put, a listing and mini clique for female artists!
Who can join and how?
Any woman with a website, art blog, or portfolio is welcome to join! You can can apply by e-mail, just send me the below info or if you'd like to opt out of the listing, feel free to just feature a button/badge somewhere on your website!
FORM
-site link & button:
-type: (artist, photographer, writer, musician, actor, etc. anything in the realm of art counts!)
-rating: (sfw, mature, nsfw)
Your art does NOT have to be considered "high brow" or of a high skill level. All that matters is that you create, whether it's anime doodles or meta-analysis on TV shows - you're welcome to join!
Other Female Artists of History
Lavinia Fontana - a Bolognese painter who is often credited as one of the first women to work professionally with male assistants and public commissions. She is known mostly for her portraiture, though she also painted scenes from mythology and religion. She also painted nudes, which was controversial for a woman of the time.
Sofonisba Anguissola - a Renaissance prodigy who worked as a portraitist to the Spanish court. She was informally educated in art, and worked around not being able to study anatomy thorugh live models by painting herself and her sisters in domestic scenes. Her work i sknown for its ability to portray subtle expressions: dignity, melancholy, wit.
Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun - a French Rococo portraitist, and the official painter of Marie Antoinette. She captured the softness, vulnerability and personality in women when women were mere ornaments and arm candy for men. Through her skill, she was able to establish herself into society's upper crust.
Clara Peeters - a pioneer of still-life paintings in the Dutch Golden Age. Her works featured food, goblets, and precious metals. If you look closely, you'll often find her reflection in the shiny surfaces, subtly inserting herself into a world where women were not supposed to be heard, seen, let alone remembered.
Guan Dosheng - A poet, painter, and calligrapher during the Yuan Dynasty, Guan Dosheng is one of the most celebrated female artists in Chinese history. She specialized in masculine arts that were revered and collected by emperors. Her parents helped shape her and gave Guan a man's classical education when most women were denied this privilege. “To play with brush and ink is a masculine sort of thing to do, yet I made this painting.”
Uemura Shōen - A nihonga painter, Uemura is known for her Bijin-ga (‘pictures of beautiful women’) that subverted the genre, which usually depicted princesses, courtesans, and other ornamental women. She painted mothers, wives, heroines, female friends laughing freely. She was hailed for snubbing tradition by using female models and was the first woman to receive Japan's Order of Culture.
Rukmini Devi Arundale - Also known for her cultural activism, Rukmini played a pivotal role in reviving and reimagining Bharatanatyam (Indian classical dance form ) as a respected art form. Bharatanatyam which was considered a vulgar art form in the early 1920s, and she was a key figure in elevating dance into a holistic visual and spiritual art. She was the first woman in Indian history to be nominated as a member of the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Parliament of India.
Frida Kahlo - Her often surreal, visceral, and honest art transformed her personal pain into explorations of idenitity, disability, sex, and nationalism with the stroke of a brush. Inarguably the most recognized Mexican artist worldwide, Frida's work challenged female beauty standards, explored the human condition, and has stood the test of time as it is still resonates to this day. “Everything can have beauty, even the worst horror.”
Remedios Varo - After fleeing fascist Spain and Nazi-occupied France, Varo found creative refuge in Mexico, where her esoteric, science-fiction inflected paintings came to fruition. A key figure in the Surrealist movement, her work often features women engaged in alchemical or otherworldly rituals. She created complex inner worlds were women were inventors, witches, explorers— imaginings of freedom and self-determination.
Edmonia Lewis - Defying both racism and sexism, she was one of the first black sculptors to gain international acclaim by working in Rome. Her neoclassical sculptures depicted themes of identity and liberation. One of her most notable pieces Forever Free was carved from marble, and represented the emancipation after the Civil War. She strove to break stereotypical depictions of black women, scantily clad or erotically provactive, portraying them with dignity and class.
Lois Mailou Jones - A Harlem Renaissance artist who was known for blending African symbolism with Western technique, Lois Mailou Jones was one of the first black women to gain national recognition as a painter. She was a professor at Howard University for over 40 years where she also mentored a generation of young black artists.
Pelagia Mendoza y Gotianquin - The first female sculptor in the Philippines and was the first female student at the Escuela de Dibujo y Pintura. She was known for her bas-relief work as well as her busts.
Anita Magsaysay-Ho - a Filipina mondernist painter whose work featured the women of Filipino culture, often depicting rural life — women with baskets, fish, and rice fields. Both nationalistic and deeply personal, her work honored female Filipino identity and strength.
Brush by brush, stitch by stitch, body by body — the female experience in art has been one of quiet revolution. Denied formal education, misattributed or erased entirely, women still made art. In stolen hours, in the privacy of drawing rooms, in the chaos of war, in exile, in poverty, in silence. And they made it beautiful, not despite their suffering, but often through it.
A dual weight: the burden of being unseen and the fierce insistence of being being seen anyways. Whether in mythic depictions, the brutal self portraits or the intimate still-lifes, there is a thoughline of survival and also of joy, of sadness, of softness that refuses to be weakness, of rage: raw and real or sharpened into elegance.
To create as a woman has always been an act of defiance. Yet, there is also light: the beauty of being unapologetically oneself, the freedom to tell a story shaped and molded by the beating of your own heart, the thoughts and the songs and the musings in your head. These women painted, sculpted, stitched, danced, wrote, and performed their truths into the world. They created a legacy: a light to guide the hands and hearts of female artists of the present and the future.
souvenirs
Buttons & Badges
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You can swap "artist" out for whatever your craft is: musician, seamstress, writer, etc. You can also style this text however you'd like!
listing
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digital artist | mature |
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| writer | nsfw |