Visit Wo!'s MySpace:

The Internet Art Revolution

It’s free, fantastic, and you don’t even have to leave your own home! Whilst some campaigners focus on getting more female artists into mainstream galleries and museums, Sarah Parry encourages us to open up to a world of talented new female artists on the internet.

Mar-May 2007

Whenever women are asked what are the most precious perks the revolution of the internet has brought into their lives, the usual ready retort often goes something like this: online shopping, cheap clothes via auction sites, getting groceries delivered to your doorstep or the fact that now some underrepresented groups of women get to actually be heard via internet forums. However, predominantly most responses are centred around consumerist hobbies such as online shopping sprees.

Well, forget the dark side of the world wide web — increases in credit card fraud and a vast sector of the population openly using it to search out pornography — what I would like to highlight is something new, exciting and positive that the internet has gifted us with — something culturally enriching; this revelation is what I like to call ‘chick’ art.

Since I have had a gander around the net, swooning in admiration at the vast array of top-notch female artistry on display, I have felt like a kid in a candy shop! When I am browsing I cannot help thinking to myself when I happen to stumble across some amazing femme artwork, that if the likes of Hallmark knew of this girl’s gift they would snap her up in a second.

I started to see how the internet could potentially be a big break for global struggling creative types that go un-noticed by the big corporate chains.

The internet deserves a lot more credit for sharing knowledge of art. Appreciation of art had been stereotyped as a hobby for the aristocratic, an activity for a minted, highly-educated elite. Kids had a favourite Power Ranger, but not a favourite artist, and this was the way of the world.

The internet has been a crucial to self-promotion through the medium of a personal website, and I think both parties get a sweet part of the deal: the artist gets to easily promote their work, and we, the art-loving public get to eye up all their lovely repertoire free of charge and purchase one for our parlour if they are available for sale.

After discovering this almost cyber-renaissance in the new millennium’s art world I could not help but notice how many budding female artists there were.

Art is fashionable again, which surely deserves celebration, and even better chick art is chic which means that there are masses of creatively gifted women out there just waiting to be found. The internet like everything else does have its vices, which we are constantly reminded of throughout different sources of media, but it has made many female artists who thought that they would remain nobodies without corporate sponsorship very happy.

These artists have proven that the internet has empowered content to ultimately overrule context, by their works being actively discussed in their droves broadly online, via their independent promotion. So now, as I have let you in on this femme influx of pretty painterly genius, I feel that I can fulfil my role as a catalyst for your artistic exploration by name-dropping a few of my personal favourites that can get you started.

JEN CORACE
Personal web page www.jencorace.com.

Jen is a freelance illustrator with undeniable artistic talent, whose artistic convention is that she bases her pieces upon the Victorian-era — successfully merging a cocktail of new and old ambiance in her pretty, postmodern portraits.

A lot of women think that what constitutes modern feminine art is the constant use of pastel colours, or bubblegum pink overpowering everything. Corace manages to paint portraits that scream femininity, yet in a subtle, classy panache. Her dashing pictures will shoot you back to your childhood in a sprightly instant, of vibrant, youthful hues, but it was her recent collection, ‘Swept Out To Sea’ that particularly caught my eye for representing the darkness of adolescence.

The collection ‘Swept Out To Sea’ presents a female protagonist during an excursion to the beach, however the stereotypical ‘sunny skies’ scenery is not present because — I believe — the girl is suffering from depression. A black wave is engulfing everybody at the beach. This striking imagery is juxtaposed with the pastel hues of the seaside. Art keeps you guessing, and Corace is an intriguing enigma as you try to get into her head and suss out what she was thinking when she created such a dark collection.

KATY HORAN

In a world where we are constantly engulfed in a culture of corporate greed, civilised to walk in straight lines around skyscrapered landscapes and slave ourselves silly in offices nine til’ five: animals have escaped this movement.

Horan’s works are almost a critique of these celebrities who dress their handbag dogs up in designer costumes, as she celebrates in her artistic aura how animals are meant to be free! Watch as these beautifully presented animals almost taunt human beings for their conformity, and ridicule the world that mankind has cocooned itself within.

Whereas humans have motives, schemes and structures in their lives, in the realms of Horan’s surreal pieces she expresses the anomic nature of creatures, that over centuries humans have had drained from their existence.

KATHLEEN LOLLEY

The last chick art success story that I have stumbled upon goes by the name of Kathleen Lolley. Lolley currently seems to be moving on to bigger, better things, as her work has even recently featured on the front cover of band, My Morning Jacket’s album. But the vast majority of her fan base has been circulated since her artworks were given pride of place upon the world wide web.

What I adore about the Lolley’s works is how her paintings mix the picture book-esque animals of our childhoods with the big, bad adult world, and each portrait seems to relate to the process of growing up. Her works present the raw realities of heartbreak and responsibility, which the picture books that socialised us never informed us of.

Fairytale folk animals struggle with loves abandoning them, drink beer and deal with depression, and demonstrate how all our lives start out with this fresh vision of nature, then as we get older these cold characteristics creep in and rear us into our adulthood.

Overall, the internet has highlighted just how much female talent there actually is out there today, as it has always been there, but never been given the rightful exposure that the internet offers. Women who work full-time hours, yet do a bit of art on the weekend are being able to make a name for themselves by creating their own online exhibitions, and it is great to see so many women being able to excel painting beyond being just a petty, part-time pipedream.

Long live chick art!