Rooms of their own: women's artist spaces

Wacky, inspiring stories of Agnes Martin, Emily Carr, Niki de Saint Phalle, Frida Kahlo, & Maya Angelou

For long time readers, you’ll recall that a few summers ago I joined an illustration residency at New York’s School of Visual Arts (colloquially known as SVA).

A five week illustration residency

As part of the residency we were each tasked with a personal project that we would show in a final group exhibition. Our only limitation was to produce a series of images based on existing texts. The text could be a story, essay, folktale, song, or poem—anything inspiring and generative.

Below is my final project from that residency, a series titled Rooms of Their Own based on biographies of women artists in their studios and living spaces. I owe a lot of this project to the breadth of personalities I discovered in

Mason Currey

’s book Daily Rituals: Women At Work—highly recommend the fascinating read!

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Rooms of Their Own

To have one’s space is a necessity for an artist, but a luxury for a woman. Virginia Woolf knew this in 1929 writing the essay “A Room of One's Own”:

A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write.

What kinds of rooms have women artists worked and lived in throughout history? Explore the real stories of five women and the wildly different environments in which they’ve made their art.

Agnes Martin

American painter Agnes Martin insisted on a clean, quiet studio as a sign of respect for her work.

The most important thing is to have a studio and establish and preserve its atmosphere. You must have a studio no matter what kind of artist you are.

You must clean and arrange your studio in a way that will forward a quiet state of mind. This cautious care of atmosphere is really needed to show respect for the work. Respect for art work and everything connected with it, one’s own and that of everyone else must be maintained and forwarded. No disrespect, carelessness or ego selfishness must be allowed to interfere if it can be prevented.

Indifference and antagonism are easily detected. You should take such people out immediately. Just turning the paintings to the wall is not enough. You yourself should not go to your studio in an indifferent or fighting mood.

—Agnes Martin: Paintings, Writings, Remembrances by Arne Glimcher

Emily Carr

Canadian artist Emily Carr had ropes and pulleys attached to her living room chairs. When she wanted a guest to leave, she’d pull up their chair—simple as that.

The room was large and high, and so were many of the canvases she worked on. To leave plenty of room for working, the three big easy chairs had ropes at each corner which ran through a pulley overhead and were tied to a small nail within easy reach. When a visitor or prospective buyer called, a chair was lowered, and there he sat, as she often said, “like a fly in a web and I the fat old spider!” Those who knew her well could tell quite easily in what esteem she held the visitor by the manner in which she returned the chair to its airy perch. If it was drawn up immediately the guest rose to his feet, he was a bore, a time-waster: “a dawdler,” she would say, as the chair went up with a jerk! But if the chair was allowed to remain till the guest had departed, then it was understood that she was genuinely sorry to see him go.

—Emily Carr As I Knew Her by Carol Pearson

Niki de Saint Phalle

French-American sculptor Niki de Saint Phalle lived inside the breasts of a large female sculpture she created.

In 1978 [Niki de Saint Phalle] embarked on the Tarot Garden, a monumental sculpture garden that she built in Tuscany over the course of twenty years. After the site’s largest sculpture, a house-size female figure, was completed, Saint Phalle moved into its interior, turning one breast into her bedroom and the other into her kitchen. (The only two windows were built into the sculpture’s nipples.)

—Daily Rituals: Women At Work by Mason Currey

Visiting the Tarot Garden in Italy is on my bucket list! Here’s a peek inside the female sculpture building.

Frida Kahlo

Mexican artist Frida Kahlo spent her final days in the hospital, painting on her plaster corsets.

I never lost my spirit. I always spent my time painting because they kept me going with Demerol, and this animated me and it made me feel happy. I painted my plaster corsets and paintings, I joked around, I wrote, they brought me movies. I passed three years in the hospital as if it was a fiesta. I cannot complain.

—Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera

Maya Angelou

Author Maya Angelou wrote in a rented hotel room, taking breaks by playing solitaire.

I have kept a hotel room in every town I’ve ever lived in. I rent a hotel room for a few months, leave my home at six, and try to be at work by six-thirty. To write, I lie across the bed, so that this elbow is absolutely encrusted at the end, just so rough with callouses. I never allow the hotel people to change the bed, because I never sleep there. I stay until twelve-thirty or one-thirty in the afternoon, and then I go home and try to breathe; I look at the work around five; I have an orderly dinner—proper, quiet, lovely dinner; and then I go back to work the next morning. Sometimes in hotels I’ll go into the room and there’ll be a note on the floor which says, Dear Miss Angelou, let us change the sheets. We think they are moldy. But I only allow them to come in and empty wastebaskets. I insist that all things are taken off the walls. I don’t want anything in there. I go into the room and I feel as if all my beliefs are suspended. Nothing holds me to anything. No milkmaids, no flowers, nothing. I just want to feel and then when I start to work I’ll remember. I’ll read something, maybe the Psalms, maybe, again, something from Mr. Dunbar, James Weldon Johnson. And I’ll remember how beautiful, how pliable the language is, how it will lend itself. If you pull it, it says, OK.” I remember that and I start to write.

—Maya Angelou interviewed by George Plimpton at 92Y (Timestamp at 9:25)

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Are you inspired yet?! I loved getting a taste of these artists’ dedication to their craft and their spaces, so often a reflection of our own mindsets and values. I would love to continue this series further someday and make a whole book of artists’ rooms!

A final note: This work is from two years ago, and I still cringe looking at some of these final images. The variable line weights, the hodge podge digital collage, the slightly off colors—I really struggled mentally while making some of these and it shows. Though I would make a lot of different choices now, I’ve grown to appreciate these quirks and chuckle at the small details.

Even if the work isn’t perfect, it is mine. It deserves to be kept, not destroyed, and it deserves to be shared, not hidden. Wishing you the same compassion for you and your work this week 🧡