Watching millions of people across the globe gather to march for women’s rights was incredibly

Watching millions of people across the globe gather to march for women’s rights was incredibly inspiring to me for a wide range of reasons. There were so many wonderful moments of unity and understanding, but there were also moments of conflict, differences of opinion and spaces where real discussions needed to happen about how women communicate with and about each other. It got me thinking a lot about women in fine art — the way we’re depicted and the way we depict ourselves. I’ve been paying a lot of attention to female-identified painters lately and how they choose to depict women in their work. French artist Hélène Delmaire caught my eye last week because her work raises so many questions, at least in my eyes, about the way women are painted and what is revealed or kept covered.
Hélène’s work has such a great sense of texture and color and uses bold, abstract swaths of paint to sometimes cover the figures’ eyes or faces. Her work makes me think about beauty, sexism and the ways in which women are censored or expected to be, act or talk a certain way. From a purely aesthetic standpoint, the color palettes she works in are stunning. I found myself going back to her Instagram feed over and over again to indulge in the rich pinks, purples and greens she uses. You can check out more of Hélène Delmaire’s work online here at ...