When we adopted a little cavoodle rescue dog I wanted to give her a brilliant name with meaning. Frida Kahlo is one of our favourite artists (mine and my daughters) but Frida didn’t quite suit her so I googled womens rights activists – or something along those lines – and came across Millicent Fawcett, and Millicent Kahlo was born!
Frida Kahlo is such an inspiration for me as an artist and a woman! She is probably the most famous female artist and disabled artist. Painting her emotions and feelings onto the canvas is exactly what I do though I’m still finding my way – Frida was excellent at articulating that so well in her work. Pain and death feature a lot in her works and that is certainly what I was painting through also with the death of my daughter. Her use of colour and self, mixing reality with elements of surrealism (though she never classed herself as a surrealist) and fantasy is something I do with my artwork. She suffered most of her life with pain and surgeries, miscarriages, affairs with both genders and painting really was her escape and catharsis. For someone who died young – aged 47 – she lived a very full life. I think my admiration for Frida is because we have so much in common with physical and emotional pain. Like Frida painting is my therapy and my saviour, without it I doubt I’d be sane – than again aren’t we all mad? Our thoughts on life and death are intertwined and we both portray that through our art. I’ll leave you with this quote by Frida that resonates to my soul “I joyfully await the exit – and I hope never to return – Frida” (“Espero Alegre la Salida – y Espero no Volver jamás”).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frida_Kahlo
Millicent Fawcett was an English political leader, activist, writer and feminist icon. She was the leader of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) which was Britain’s largest women’s rights organisations. She campaigned for womens suffrage legally via legislative change as opposed to other suffragist parties who used violence. She explains her disaffiliation from the more militant movement in her book Women’s Suffrage: A Short History of a Great Movement:
I could not support a revolutionary movement, especially as it was ruled autocratically, at first, by a small group of four persons, and latterly by one person only…. In 1908, this despotism decreed that the policy of suffering violence, but using none, was to be abandoned. After that, I had no doubt whatever that what was right for me and the NUWSS was to keep strictly to our principle of supporting our movement only by argument, based on common sense and experience and not by personal violence or lawbreaking of any kind
She wrote: “I cannot say I became a suffragist. I always was one, from the time I was old enough to think at all about the principles of Representative Government.” I couldn’t agree more! I can’t even remember a time when womens issues and equality weren’t at the forefront of my thinking. The awareness has always been there for me. Maybe it’s because I had younger brothers who were always allowed to do more the me because my parents weren’t as worried about them or the fact I grew up in a neighbourhood full of boys? Whatever the reason feminism (and I used to hate that term) is very much still a high priority for me.
Over the years she backed countless campaigns including raising the age of consent to curb child abuse, cruelty to children, criminalising incest, stamping out the white slave trade, repealing the contagious diseases act and its double standard to name a few. In 1925 she was appointed Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire and in 2018 she became the first woman to be commemorated with a statue in Parliament Square. She has a list of credits, books and articles as long as your arm and that is why she is such an inspiration to me and why my beautiful dog is named after her.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millicent_Fawcett
These two women make me want to be a better person, a better artist and to keep fighting for the rights of women! To try to bring about social change, a better world for all full of kindness and compassion one painting at a time
Creation! 