The title of my series is “Behind Every Great Country.”
Have you ever heard that old saying, “Behind every great man is a great woman?”
Each of the painting in this series is about 4’ x 5’, created in oil paint on self-stretched, self-built canvases.
On each painting, “There is a great woman” is written in the languages of each woman’s motherland, including Philippines, Finland, India, and Colombia: Tagalog, Finnish, Gujarati, and Spanish. I only ever used red, white, blue, or Pthalo blue. I also only used white in two of them, so that when they are displayed, they recall red and white stripes.
This series is a celebration of what women, and in particular, women from all nations, have contributed to the United States of America. Like the original saying, “behind every great man is a great woman” was commandeered to empower women (ironic considering its original undertones), I now use the phrase “behind every great country is a great woman” and presidential portraits of ordinary-yet-extraordinary women to recognize their immeasurable and underestimated Grit.
This painting represents the first of the four paintings. It is a painting of one of my best friends who is a citizen of both the United States and Colombia. This artist represents both nations on a daily basis with unshakeable principles, indisputable talent, and a razor-sharp wit (available in not one, but three languages). Her art speaks for her too – not that it needs to.
