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kidadaewilliams.com
KEW
@kidadaewilliams.com
4.1K followers 390 following 2.6K posts
I read, tell stories, block early/often, mind my business, and write--I SAW DEATH COMING is now in paperback.
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KEW @kidadaewilliams.com · Nov 18
My girl made it to the Blacksonian, y'all! And she's in great company! ❤️‍🔥
A bookshelf in a store filled with books, centering the paperback edition of I Saw Death Coming by Kidada Williams. Next to her book is Allow Me to Retort by Elie Mystal, Black History AF by Michael Harriot, and Black Power by Kwame Ture.
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When we said she was a weirdo some of y'all said we're mean. But the proof is in the proverbial pudding
February 8, 2026 at 3:25 PM
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“Carry This In Remembrance Of Me” by Delita Martin (American) - Acrylic, charcoal, lithography, relief printing, decorative papers, & hand stitching / 2019 - Muscarelle Museum of Art (Williamsburg, Virginia) #WomenInArt #DelitaMartin #Muscarelle #WomensArt #WomenArtists #artText #WomenPaintingWomen
A young Black woman with dark black skin stands in three-quarter view, her shoulders angled left while her head turns back toward us. Her expression is serious and self-possessed with lips set and eyes steady. Short, tightly curled hair frames her face, punctuated by three rosette-like circles along the hairline. A veil of translucent turquoise dots washes over her forehead, cheeks, and neck, continuing down her torso. Some circles are crisp, others faint, as if the pattern is drifting. Behind her, the background becomes a dense constellation of circles in many sizes, so her body feels both separate from and woven into the field. She wears a strapless, pale dress tinted with icy blue, patterned with hand-drawn lavender rings and spirals like water on water. At her neck sits an expansive, dark collar that spreads across the shoulders like lace or leaves, its edges visibly hand-stitched. Nestled in the collar are circular medallions of layered paper and fabric with faint handwriting and numbers appear on them, including the plainly legible words “sold to.” The title echoes the religious phrase “do this in remembrance of me,” but Martin’s shift to carry turns remembrance into a burden and a duty. Made in the context of Muscarelle’s “1619/2019” exhibition on slavery and forced migration, this portrait treats memory as something living … and unfinished. The necklace’s “sold to” and ledger-like numerals evoke bills of sale and the paperwork of slavery, making the language of ownership impossible to overlook. By cutting, layering, and stitching those fragments into adornment, Martin re-authors the archive so what was once evidence of commodification becomes mourning and resistance. The cool blues and repeating circles (often linked in her practice to spirit space and feminine power) are veil and shield like an ancestral presence that protects the sitter’s interior life. Her unwavering gaze insists on presence over possession, asking us to remember with accountability.
January 2, 2026 at 7:14 AM
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“April” by Elise Kendrick (American) - Mixed media / 2021 - Frist Art Museum (Nashville, Tennessee) #WomenInArt #EliseKendrick #Kendrick #MixedMedia #artText #BlueskyArt #AfricanAmericanArt #BlackWomen #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #BlackArtist #BlackArt #FristArtMuseum #WomenPaintingWomen
The title "April" depicts a person described by the American artist Elise Kendrick as a content creator, former podcaster, and bassist to place a specific person inside a painting that, at first glance, seems like only a universal icon of beauty and rest. Created during the pandemic as Kendrick began her “The Aunties” series, the portrait carries the feeling of finding community through screens with a face held close and a private breath made public. The close-up portrait shows a Black woman with medium-brown skin and a full, natural dark afro that fans outward like a halo. Her brows are thick and arched. Her eyes are closed, chin lifted, and deep plum lips part slightly to reveal white teeth, suggesting a moment of release. Kendrick renders her face and neck in radiant bands of orange, gold, green, and violet, with crisp highlights along the cheekbones and nose and cool shadows along the neck. She wears a plain white t-shirt. Behind her, a patterned field repeats jars labeled “Black Magic” in layered blues and purples, like wallpaper, with scratchy, hand-drawn lines. The repeated “Black Magic” jars fold the Black salon into the picture plane. They nod to the alchemy of modern haircare including oils, gels, edge control, and curl creams and likely to a reclaimed language of power, where “magic” names skill, inheritance, and self-definition rather than stereotype. April’s lifted head and closed eyes become an insistence on softness without apology to take up space, be seen, and choose ease. Shown in the Frist Art Museum’s micro-exhibition "Elise Kendrick: Salon Noir," Kendrick’s bright palette and graphic patterning extend her Nashville-based practice of honoring women of color and the cultural meanings carried in hairstyle, texture, and routine. The highlights and the repeating, label-like jars feel like they might be visual shorthand for the salon as both workplace and sanctuary, and for Black hair as culture, craft, and pride.
January 5, 2026 at 7:30 PM
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“Brea” by Monica Ikegwu (American) - Oil on canvas / 2023 - Muskegon Museum of Art (Muskegon, Michigan) #WomenInArt #WomensArt #WomenArtists #MonicaIkegwu #Ikegwu #MuskegonMuseumofArt #BlackArt #BlackArtist #art #artText #BlueskyArt #BeYou #AfricanAmericanArtist #AmericanArt #WomenPaintingWomen
A young Black woman with deep brown skin stands against a softly graded pink backdrop marked by horizontal bands. She faces forward, weight settled, and meets our gaze through oversized burgundy glasses. With both hands raised, she lightly pinches the frames at her temples for an in-between moment of looking …. and being looked at. Her natural, coiled hair spreads in short twists around her head. A small septum ring and subtle highlights on her cheekbones and glossy lips catch the studio light. She wears a cropped, magenta-and-black striped cardigan over a pale pink top tied with a black ribbon as the hem lifts to show her stomach and a belly-button piercing. High-waisted, wine-colored trousers sit low on her hips, their seams and folds modeled with careful shading. Layered necklaces include a small heart-shaped pendant. Her wrists are stacked with beaded bracelets and a watch while rings glint on her fingers. American artist Monica Ikegwu renders skin, fabric, and jewelry with crisp realism while keeping the surrounding pinks velvety and quiet, so the woman’s serious, alert, and unflinching expression is self-possessed and fully present. By 2023, Ikegwu had built her practice around Black portraiture and the politics of perception including how people are seen … and how they choose to appear. She has described her aim as portraying sitters “not as subjects to paint, but as people with their own sense of self.” “Brea” leans into that tension as the gesture of adjusting glasses becomes a quiet claim to authorship, as if the young woman is setting the terms of visibility in real time. The saturated pink palette is both tender and emphatic to turn a familiar “pretty” color into a stage for confidence and edge. This painting gives everyday style such as bracelets, piercings, stripes, and streetwear a monumental feeling, insisting that contemporary self-fashioning is not vanity but identity work for a practiced, dignified way of saying, I decide how you meet me.
January 8, 2026 at 4:37 PM
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“Usher Board President” by Robert Pruitt (American) - Charcoal, conté, and coffee on paper / 2018 - California African American Museum (Los Angeles) #WomenInArt #RobertPruitt #BlackArt #AmericanArt #AfricanAmericanArt #art #artText #BlueskyArt #PortraitofaWoman #CAAM #CaliforniaAfricanAmericanMuseum
A monumental, life-size drawing shows a Black woman with medium-brown skin standing in three-quarter profile, facing our right. Her posture is upright and composed, shoulders squared, as if holding steady through a moment of quiet responsibility. She has long, thick natural hair worn loose and full, framing her face and falling past her shoulders. A folded sheet of white paper (like a program or improvised hat) rests lightly on her head. Her features are modeled with soft highlights along the cheekbone and nose and her mouth is gently closed. Her eyes are focused into the distance and her expression is thoughtful and calm. Her left hand lifts a pencil to her lips in a gesture of concentration as her right arm hangs relaxed at her side, fingers slightly curled. She wears a vivid red dress with dramatic puffed sleeves, a fitted bodice, and a draped, gathered skirt that swells with weight and movement. Cuffed wrists, small buttons, and fabric seams are carefully outlined. At the chest, a striped inset panel is dotted with small celestial emblems set close to the heart. The woman is rendered with meticulous shading in charcoal and conté, while warm coffee washes stain the paper into a soft halo behind her. Faint smudges, tape marks, and the paper’s raw edges remain visible, leaving the surrounding field mostly open so her silhouette and the saturated red garment command the space. American artist Robert Pruitt’s title identifies the usher board, a tradition of many Black American church leadership often carried by women with an ethic of care grounded in welcomeness, order, and protection. The pencil hints at her stewardship and also mirrors the artist’s own tool. Emblems on her bodice like a sunburst and planets stretch the portrait toward history and the future, as if her daily responsibility holds cosmic weight. Created for Pruitt’s CAAM exhibition “Devotion” (2018–19), the work treats its subject as an icon of ordinary greatness: poised, radiant, and fully present.
January 10, 2026 at 4:27 PM
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“Girl in a Red Dress” by Charles Henry Alston (American) - Oil on canvas / 1934 - Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) #WomenInArt #CharlesHenryAlston #Alston #HarlemRenaissance #AfricanAmericanArt #BlackPortraiture #BlackArt #artText #BlueskyArt #AmericanArt #PortraitofaGirl #TheMet #MetMuseum
A young Black woman sits with her body turned slightly while she looks off to our left, as if her attention has been caught by something beyond the frame. She wears a vivid red dress that is both formal and modern, anchored by a large, rounded white collar and chest drop that brightens her neckline and draws our eyes upward. Her hair is short and close to the head, shaping her profile with clean, sculptural clarity. The painting balances bold color against simplified forms as her figure is modeled with calm, steady contours rather than fussy detail, giving her an iconic stillness. The setting is spare and uncluttered, letting the red of the dress carry emotional weight via warmth, visibility, and intent while her gaze remains reserved, self-contained, and unmistakably dignified. Nothing about her posture asks for permission so the portrait holds her as a person with interior life, style, and agency, captured in a moment that feels quiet but resolute. Made in 1934, this work sits within Harlem Renaissance portraiture’s insistence on modern Black subjecthood and beauty without caricature plus selfhood without explanation. Art historian Richard Powell called this painting a model of the “New Negro” woman: “defiantly black, beautiful, and feminine, yet also unsettled, mysterious, and utterly modern.” American artist Charles Henry Alston’s approach reinforces that tension as the sitter is intimate in scale, yet deliberately unreadable. The painting’s sculptural face and elongated neck also echo Alston’s interest in African aesthetics joined to modernist pictorial flatness. In the mid-1930s, Alston was stepping into public leadership as an artist-educator and WPA mural supervisor in Harlem, helping shape a visual culture of representation. This portrait embodies Alain Locke’s challenge that “art must discover and reveal the beauty which prejudice and caricature have overlaid” … not by idealizing the sitter, but by granting her complexity and presence.
January 15, 2026 at 4:02 PM
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“Portrait d’une jeune femme noire” (Portrait of a Young Black Woman) by École française / French School - Oil on canvas / c. 1901-1913 - Musée Léon Dierx (Saint-Denis, La Réunion) #WomenInArt #MuseeLeonDierx #ÉcoleFrançaise #FrenchSchool #PortraitofaWoman #art #artText #arte #BlueskyArt #FrenchArt
This portrait in the collection of Musée Léon Dierx in Saint-Denis on La Réunion island in the Indian Ocean shaped by intertwined histories of French enslavement, indenture, migration, and creolization. It is catalogued with a descriptive “assigned title” and attributed broadly to the French School (École française). The work could be viewed as holding two truths at once: the sitter’s vivid presence, and the archive’s gaps around her name, story, and the circumstances of the sitting. This small, vertical portrait shows a young Black woman from the upper chest up against a softly mottled, warm brown background. She has medium-brown skin, dark eyes, and short, tightly curled hair brushed back from her forehead. Her gaze lifts upward and to her left, as if she’s thinking past us rather than posing. Her expression is calm with closed lips and relaxed features. Light gathers along her brow, nose bridge, and the tops of her cheeks, while her jaw and neck fall into gentle shadow. She wears teardrop, pearl earrings that catch bright highlights, and a necklace made of small, rounded red beads. Her blouse is white with vertical blue striping and soft folds at the neckline and shoulders. The paint surface looks aged and delicate, with tiny specks and tonal variations that make the image feel both intimate and timeworn. Her upward glance can be viewed as aspiration, vigilance, or maybe quiet refusal to be reduced to a type. Her jewelry matters, too, because the luminous earrings and red beads function like punctuation, drawing attention to dignity and self-fashioning even within a restrained palette. The painting can be approached as an ethical encounter more not “who did France depict,” but how a young woman’s individuality endures despite anonymity. The museum records it as a 1913 gift (“Don Comité Parisien”) and is a reminder that institutions collecting histories can preserve faces while erasing names … and that with careful looking, we can begin to restore complexity.
January 17, 2026 at 3:38 AM
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“Mississippi Girl” by Marion Greenwood (American) - Lithograph on paper / 1945 - High Museum of Art (Atlanta, Georgia) #WomenInArt #WomensArt #WomanArtist #HighMuseumOfArt #Lithograph #BlackArt #AmericanArt #AmericanArtist #art #artText #artwork #Greenwood #HighMuseum #WomenArtists #MarionGreenwood
Made in 1945, this black-and-white lithograph sits within American artist Marion Greenwood’s broader commitment to figure-centered work that treats daily life as worthy of monumentality. Greenwood, known for her training in New York and abroad, her mural practice, and years of travel, brings public-scale seriousness into an intimate portrait format because even though the sitter is unnamed, she is not anonymous in feeling. The print shows a seated young Black woman. Her skin is rendered in rich, velvety tones, with soft highlights along her cheekbone, nose, collarbones, and the curve of her forearm. She holds her head high, chin gently lifted, and looks outward with a confident expression as if she’s meeting our gaze without performing for it. Her hair is swept up into a tall, wind-blown shape, adding height and movement to an otherwise quiet pose. She wears a loose, open-neck blouse that almost falls off one shoulder, revealing the strap and lace edge of an undergarment. The fabric is described with broad, chalky strokes that contrast with the darker modeling of her face and neck. Her left arm drapes over the back of a wooden chair, hand hanging loosely, while her left hand rests in her lap. A patterned skirt with dense dark, repeating marks anchors the lower portion of the image. Behind her, a pared-down interior space of suggested walls and a vertical edge like a window frame keeps our attention on her presence and posture. The lithographic medium amplifies Greenwood’s empathy through pressure, grain, and contrast. As velour blacks build dignity, lighter passages leave room for breath and interiority. The girl’s lifted chin and resting hands read as both ease and resolve for an image of girlhood that resists sentimentality, offering instead quiet authority. In a decade marked by upheaval and return, Greenwood’s portrait suggests a different kind of “rural America” … not a backdrop, but a person who is steady, specific, and fully centered.
January 17, 2026 at 6:41 AM
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“Waiting” by Ernest Crichlow (American) - Lithograph / 1968 - Delaware Art Museum (Wilmington) #WomenInArt #ErnestCrichlow #Crichlow #DelawareArtMuseum #Arte #1960s #Lithograph #BlackArt #art #artText #BlueskyArt #PortraitofaGirl #AmericanArt #RacialJusticeArt #AfricanAmericanArtist #AmericanArtist
A black-and-white lithograph centers on the head and shoulders of a Black girl set against wide, unprinted paper. Her skin is modeled with velvety grays and deep shadows, plus bright highlights on the forehead, nose, and cheekbone that make the face feel carefully lit and 3D. Short, textured hair is gathered upward, leaving one ear visible. She turns to our left, focused as if listening or watching for something beyond the frame. Her expression is quiet, serious, and tired in a way that suggests endurance rather than drama. A pale shirt is loosely drawn at the shoulders, with a few darker strokes and speckled marks suggesting folds and shadow. Over the entire figure lies a rigid grid of barbed wire with horizontal and vertical strands across her face and clothing, with twisted knots and sharp points at the intersections. The wire lines are thin but insistently repeated, so the barrier is a restraint made visible. Made in 1968, the work turns a single portrait into a statement about imposed limits. The girl is presented with dignity and specificity, yet seen through a structure designed to divide. The wire grid is both literal fencing and a compressed symbol for segregation, surveillance, and the everyday boundaries that define where safety, freedom, and possibility are permitted to exist. American artist Ernest Crichlow heightens that meaning through stark color contrasts of black against white as well as soft human shading against hard linear constraint, so our eyes keep moving between the child’s living face and the cold geometry that interrupts it. The title, “Waiting,” lands as a condition as much as a moment. Is she waiting to pass, to be allowed, ot to simply be treated as fully human? And because her gaze stays fixed outward, still, alert, and unresolved, the image holds tension between confinement and persistence, likely asking us to notice not only the barrier, but the person who lives behind it.
January 17, 2026 at 10:56 PM
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“Knows Her Medicine Crow Indian” by Kevin Red Star (Apsáalooke/Crow American) - Acrylic on canvas / 1981 - Denver Art Museum (Colorado) #WomenInArt #art #artText #artwork #DenverArtMuseum #KevinRedStar #RedStar #IndigenousWomen #Crow #Apsaalooke #PortraitofaWoman #indigeneousArt #NativeAmericanArt
A Crow (Apsáalooke) woman sits centered with her body turned only slightly as her face meets ours with a steady, composed gaze. Her skin is warm brown and her hair is parted and braided into two long plaits, the lower lengths wrapped for ceremony. She wears an elk-tooth cloak rendered in bold black, covered with dozens of pale, oval “teeth” that catch the light and suggest movement and sound. Bright red cuffs, collar, and a wide belt stand out while small white accents appear in her earrings and beadwork. Her hands are painted noticeably larger than her head and torso, resting in the foreground like an emphasized statement. She sits on a modern red chair before a flat wall, while a tipi scene in a frame appears behind her depicting it beneath a round moon (or sun). Heavy outlining and speckled paint spatters keep attention on the surface, making the portrait feel both intimate and monumental. Apsáalooke (Crow Nation) artist Kevin Red Star builds portraits that honor Crow life while refusing a single, fixed time. The Denver Art Museum notes that his figures can be assembled from multiple sources including old photographs, historic tribal enrollment rolls, and images he makes at ceremonies and feasts, so name, clothing, and setting can come from different moments. Here, the modern chair and ambiguous “window” of tipis place the sitter in the present while she wears tradition. The elk teeth (each one tied on individually in real regalia) signal value, skill, and community history. By enlarging them, Red Star makes their cultural importance impossible to overlook. He also uses a sun or moon as a Crow symbol to give the sense that his people are “planted,” even when the space feels like it might float. The deliberate distortion of the hands grants authority and presence, as if knowledge and care are literally what we meet first. Red Star, raised on the Crow Reservation and trained in formal painting, said you have to “know what you’re breaking before you break it.”
January 19, 2026 at 6:17 PM
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“The Lawd Is My Shepard” by Osmond Watson (Jamaican) - Oil on canvas / 1969 - National Gallery of Jamaica (Kingston) #WomenInArt #OsmondWatson #NationalGalleryofJamaica #JamaicanArt #CaribbeanArt #PortraitPainting #BlackArt #art #artText #BlueskyArt #PortraitofaWoman #JamaicanArtist #CaribbeanArtist
Artist Osmond Watson titles the work in Jamaican Creole, turning “Psalm 23” from the Christian bible into everyday speech and locating faith in the lived world of a market. He monumentalizes a working Black Jamaican woman whose spiritual practice sits alongside economic self-reliance with produce for sale below, and holy scripture at the center. The woman sits looking slightly to our right with calm steadiness. She wears a pale blue headwrap that catches the light, a short-sleeved checkerboard blouse in warm reds and golds, and a blue skirt that folds in soft, heavy arcs across her bare knees. Her hands clasp an opened brown “HOLY BIBLE” book in her lap. She sits inside a market stall improvised from boards, nails, and sheet metal as angled wood planks hold up a tarp above her, a wooden barrel curves at left, and a patterned blue metal panel frames the right edge like a patched wall. At her feet, ripe round, orange-red and golden fruit spills forward, while a basket of red beans and a metal cup sits at the lower right. The space feels intimate and guarded as dark corners press in, yet the woman’s presence holds the scene, as if prayer and work share the same seat. Her skin is rendered in deep, glossy browns with cool green shadows, outlined with decisive dark contours that sharpen cheekbones, eyelids, and her nose. Two silver bangles circle one wrist and a ring glints on a finger. Her mouth is closed, neither smiling nor stern, more like someone looking up while reading. The geometry of the stall and the careful stillness of her pose make the Bible feel like the painting’s quiet compass. Painted in early post-independence 1969, it affirms Black Jamaican dignity being direct, unsentimental, and public. The cubism-touched geometry, saturated color, and heavy outlines lend a stained-glass intensity, elevating everyday items and daily labor into icon. As critic David Boxer put it, Watson wanted art that could be “understood and appreciated by all levels of society.”
January 19, 2026 at 8:17 PM
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“The Beautyful Ones Series #5” by Njideka Akunyili Crosby (Nigerian-American) - Acrylic, transfers, colored pencil, pastel, graphite, collage, and commemorative fabric on paper / 2016 - Buffalo AKG Art Museum (New York) #WomenInArt #artText #NjidekaAkunyiliCrosby #BuffaloAKG #WomensArt #WomenArtists
The sitter is Nigerian-American artist Njideka Akunyili Crosby’s mother, Dora N. Akunyili, pictured as a student during an early chapter in the life of a future public leader in Nigeria. Commemorative fabric made to honor her after death pulls the portrait into the present tense of grief. With a chalkboard pangram and a quick flicker of runners, learning becomes motion via repetition, discipline, and endurance. The image is a generational pledge that education can widen a girl’s horizon … and keep her hopes moving. She is a young Black girl sitting on a low step, her posture relaxed and self-possessed. She has deep brown skin, close-cropped dark hair, and a warm, steady smile. She wears a cobalt-blue sleeveless dress patterned with pale floral motifs, round light blue earrings, a thin yellow necklace, and gray-blue slide sandals. One hand rests lightly on her knee while the other drapes across her lap, giving her a quiet sense of ease. Behind her, a dark chalkboard fills most of the background. Faint chalk text repeats a pangram of “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog,” like a lesson still echoing after class. Along the right edge, vivid green-and-yellow commemorative fabric is collaged in a vertical band showing circular emblems with a printed portrait and words of tribute. The “step” beneath the young woman is built from layered photo-transfers with small, energetic images of runners at a finish flickering across the surface … so that education, family memory, and public life share the same setting. The blend of careful modeling with drawing and paint plus printed materials feels intimate, like a treasured photograph remade by hand. Crosby layers photo-transfers, Nigerian references, and precise drawing to show how a life is made from private memory and public history. This work belongs to her series “The Beautyful Ones” portraits of family, titled after Ghanaian author Ayi Kwei Armah’s 1968 “The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born” novel.
January 20, 2026 at 2:02 AM
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“Étude de femme noire avec couvre-chef noir et robe blanche” (Study of a Black Woman) by François Joseph Navez (Belgian) - Oil on canvas / c. 1822-1835 - Musée de la Ville de Bruxelles (Brussels, Belgium) #WomenInArt #BrusselsCityMuseum #FrancoisJosephNavez #Navez #artText #arte #PortraitofaWoman
As an “étude” (study), the painting sits between portraiture and practice for an image made to understand likeness, light, and the fall of cloth, while still granting the sitter unmistakable presence. At the Brussels City Museum (Musée de la Ville de Bruxelles in French and Museum van de Stad Brussel in Dutch), a period label visible on the frame uses outdated, racist terms in both French and Dutch. The museum’s current title shifts to more respectful language, but the sitter’s identity is still not recorded. That tension of careful observation paired with archival silence matters. Belgian artist François Joseph Navez, a leading neoclassical painter and a sought-after portraitist in Brussels, trained in the orbit of French artist Jacques-Louis David and later held a major academic role in the city. Within that world, Black women were often treated as “types” or anonymous models rather than fully documented individuals. Here, her averted gaze and composed posture resist that flattening as she is not performing for spectacle, but quietly, firmly occupying space and inviting us to view the work as both a technical exercise and a reminder of whose names history chose not to keep. She is an adult Black woman shown from the upper chest against a softly mottled gray background. She has medium-deep brown skin and dark brown eyes plus closed lips, relaxed brow, and gaze turned slightly up and to our right. A dark green-black head covering falls in broad, heavy folds around her face while a narrow, beige band wraps across the crown, catching the strongest light. Her simple white dress has loose sleeves and a wide neckline edged with a thin red trim leaving her collarbones and the top of her shoulders bare. Light from our left warms her cheek, forehead, and nose, while the right side of her face and neck deepens into shadow. Brushwork is economical and attentive, prioritizing the weight of fabric and structure of the beautiful face of the unnamed woman.
January 24, 2026 at 7:53 PM
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“Kah-béck-a, The Twin, Wife of Bloody Hand” by George Catlin (American) - Oil on canvas / 1832 - Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, DC) #WomenInArt #GeorgeCatlin #Catlin #SmithsonianAmericanArtMuseum #SAAM #Smithsonian #NativeAmericanArt #art #arte #artText #AmericanArt #PortraitofaWoman
It’s a bust-length portrait of an Indigenous woman, shown front-facing and centered, her posture steady and composed. She has long, dark hair that falls over her shoulders, and a direct gaze that meets ours. Her skin appears warm brown in tone, softly modeled with light across the cheeks and forehead. Her hair-part and upper cheeks are painted vermilion red which was a widespread women’s custom American artist George Catlin observed. She wears a light-colored hide garment with feathery edging at the neckline and sleeves. Multiple strands of blue and white beads layer across her chest, adding weight and texture. Her hands rest together near the lower edge of the picture, suggesting a seated pose. The background is spare and atmospheric, a muted, open field of color that keeps attention on her face, hair, and adornment. Painted during Catlin’s 1832 journey along the Missouri River, this work records Kah-béck-a (“The Twin”), identified as the wife of Bloody Hand, a chief of the Arikara (Sahnish) people, and painted at a Mandan village. Catlin’s project was to create a self-styled “Indian Gallery” which was driven by urgency and ambition to document Native lives as the United States intensified expansion, forced removal, and the cascading disruptions of disease, trade, and violence. The portrait therefore holds a tension. It offers a rare named presence of an Arikara woman in early U.S. painting, but it is also shaped by an outsider’s framing and the era’s collecting impulse. Even within that constraint, Kah-béck-a’s stillness reads as self-possessed like an image of personhood rather than spectacle. It invites us to consider what is known, what is omitted, and whose voice gets to define the story.
January 25, 2026 at 9:51 PM
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“Afros and Banjos” by Charles Eady (American) - Oil on canvas / 2021 - Appleton Museum of Art (Ocala, Florida) #WomenInArt #art #artText #arte #CharlesEady #Eady #AppletonMuseumofArt #BlackArt #AfricanAmericanArt #TheUnsceneSouth #AfricanAmericanArtist #PortraitofaWoman #AmericanArt #AmericanArtist
A stylized portrait centers on a Black woman seated against a flat, velvety crimson background. She is shown from the waist up, shoulders squared and posture upright, looking directly at us with a relaxed, yet unflinching gaze. Her features are modeled in warm amber and deep brown tones plus highlights along her nose and cheekbones as shadows collect under the eyes, cheek, and chin. Her eyebrows are strong and arched. Her lips are softly closed, neither smiling nor tense. Her natural black hair forms a rounded afro that fans outward on both sides, held back by a wide orange-red headband. She wears a dark, structured jacket with narrow collar, buttoned placket, pronounced shoulders, and thin lines that trace seams and edges like a drawn outline. Down the center of the composition rises the golden neck of a banjo, with small tuning pegs near the top. A hand wraps the instrument, suggesting control and readiness rather than performance for an audience. Simplified shapes, tight cropping, and high-contrast palette make her presence feel iconic and dignified. Made in 2021, “Afros and Banjos” pairs two resonant signifiers of Black cultural memory: the afro (as a visible claim to self-definition), and the banjo (an instrument with West African roots that became central to Black musical life in America, even as it was later distorted through minstrel stereotypes). American artist Charles Eady’s broader project draws on research about free Black communities in the pre–Civil War South, and his exhibition “The Unscene South: Charles Eady Revisits History” invited viewers to reimagine who belongs in history. Here, the unidentified woman’s direct gaze refuses spectacle while the red background feels urgent, and the instrument’s upright line reads like a banner depicting music as lineage carried forward.
January 28, 2026 at 4:01 PM
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“Portrait of a Woman with Pink Blouse” by Maggie Laubser (South African) - Oil on canvas / c. 1926 - Sanlam Art Gallery (Bellville, Western Cape, South Africa) #WomenInArt #art #artText #arte #artwork #MaggieLaubser #Laubser #SanlamArtGallery #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #WomenPaintingWomen
An almost bored woman rests the side of her face in one hand, elbow propped, while her other hand reaches forward on a pale blue cloth or skirt. Her short, dark hair frames calm, direct eye contact. Her features are built from broad, simplified planes of warm tans crossed with green and violet which are outlined in deep strokes that keep the face legible while emphasizing structure over realism. A loose pink blouse dominates the upper half, painted with brisk, visible brushwork that suggests softness and wear. The background is sparse and light, with scumbled marks and faint lines like a studio wall, giving her room to breathe. The overall mood is quiet, self-contained, and attentive like an everyday pose rendered with expressionist clarity rather than polished detail. Her shoulders round forward in a resting pose that suggests reflection rather than drama. Because the color is intentionally non-naturalistic, the work invites attention to form and feeling more than any single fixed complexion. The “’26” beside Laubser’s signature places this work plausibly in the mid-1920s, soon after her return to South Africa from Europe, where she absorbed modernist ideas that valued emotional truth over naturalism. In that context, the non-naturalistic color becomes a language for inner life so the green and mauve across the face can feel like shifting light, layered emotion, or the complexity of being seen. The simplicity of the setting keeps the woman’s dignity at the center for an ordinary pose granted the seriousness of a full portrait. The pink blouse functions almost like an aura, warming the whole canvas, while the cool blue below steadies the composition like a counterweight. Nothing in the painting tells us her name do it lets her stand for herself rather than for a story imposed from outside. Laubser’s firm outlines and solid hands insist on agency, making this not a fleeting “study,” but a sustained encounter with a woman’s quiet endurance and attentive gaze.
January 29, 2026 at 7:42 AM
Reposted by KEW
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“Fatima” by Mrs. Lionel Lee (Nationality unknown) - Oil on canvas / c. 1886 - National Gallery of Jamaica (Kingston) #WomenInArt #MrsLionelLee #NationalGalleryofJamaica #PortraitofaWoman #arte #CaribbeanArt #BlueskyArt #ArtOfTheDay #CaribbeanArt #JamaicanArt #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists
Painted in late 19th-century Jamaica by Mrs. Lionel Lee, a woman artist known only through her married name, this portrait holds two kinds of partial record: the sitter is identified as “Fatima,” while the painter remains otherwise undocumented. A young woman is depicted from the chest up against a shallow, softly mottled beige background. Her broad shoulders sit almost parallel to the picture plane as her head turns to our left in three-quarter profile. She has honey-brown, sun-warmed skin, dark eyes, and an alert, steady expression that stays private rather than inviting our attention. Her hair is gathered back, with loose curls escaping as long the back of the neck. A muted red head tie wraps her head high at the crown, banded with a pale strip of cloth that catches the light. A small gold hoop earring glints at her left ear. She wears an almost collarless blue-green striped tunic, slightly open at the neck, where a crisp white undergarment shows through. The paint is most finely blended in her face, while the background remains undifferentiated, keeping attention on her features and posture. This portrait is often analyzed through what it withholds as much as what it reveals. Fatima does not meet us directly. Her averted gaze can signal period ideas of feminine modesty, but it also frames the image as observational and closer to an ethnographic “study” than a society portrait. The tunic’s stripes appear irregular, as if the garment were pieced together, and scholars connect such fabric to indigo-dyed Guinée cloth, linked to laboring lives and African diasporic trade networks. Her head tie is notable for its simplicity. Instead of sharply articulated folds pictured elsewhere in Caribbean art, it works as protection: holding hair, shielding from sun and dust, and helping preserve styles made during limited free time.
January 30, 2026 at 8:38 AM
Reposted by KEW
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“Elizabeth Moaney in Profile with a Basket of Fruit” by Ruth Starr Rose (American) - Oil on canvas / 1930 - Water’s Edge Museum (Oxford, Maryland) #WomenInArt #art #artText #artwork #RuthStarrRose #WatersEdgeMuseum #PortraitofaBlackWoman #AfricanAmericanArt #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists
Painted in 1930, this work is a portrait of labor and self-possession all at once. Fruit and a plain dress can hint at domestic work, yet adult Black woman Elizabeth Moaney’s erect posture and far-seeing focus refuse any reduction to role. American artist Ruth Starr Rose, who painted many Black residents of Maryland’s Eastern Shore, wrote with plainspoken affection about the respect between artist and sitter saying, “I know that Elizabeth Moaney is very proud to be living with ‘the quality’ … but not nearly as proud as I am to have her there.” In a period when Black life was routinely caricatured in popular media, Rose’s modern color and direct profile act as a quiet rebuttal, insisting on dignity, boundaries, and interior life. Moaney is seated in profile facing our left. She sits upright with squared shoulders and a steady, self-contained presence, her gaze directed past the edge of the canvas. Her skin is rendered in warm deep-brown tones with coppery highlights along her cheekbone and brow. Her dark hair is brushed back close to the head, exposing her left ear and jaw. She wears a simple short-sleeved blouse in pale cream and soft yellow, the collar slightly open as broad brushstrokes model the folds. Behind her, a luminous blue-green background sweeps diagonally from turquoise to teal. In the lower left, the curved top rail of her chair arcs into view. On her lap rests a small bowl holding fruit, like an apple and a bright orange, painted as compact bursts of red and gold. Her hands cradle the bowl. Moaney’s features are depicted with a crisp silhouette, and her eye is modeled to suggest focused concentration. More loosely brushed clothing and background keep the space airy, so her profile is solid and present while cool blues against warm skin and citrus create a calm, resolute mood.
February 2, 2026 at 7:37 AM
Reposted by KEW
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"Mary" by Ilse Martha Bischoff (American) - Oil on canvas / 1943 - Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College (Hanover, New Hampshire) #WomenInArt #HoodMuseumOfArt #HoodMuseum #IlseMarthaBischoff #Bischoff #BlackPortraiture #art #artText #BlueskyArt #PortraitofaWoman #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists
American artist Ilse Martha Bischoff titled the work "Mary," and contemporary records also preserve her longer original title, "Mary (Portrait of a Negress)" using language now recognized as harmful, but historically revealing of how Black women were categorized in U.S. visual culture. The painting somewhat counters that flattening with a touch of personhood via a name, a careful likeness, and a pause that lets Mary remain unknowable on her own terms. Mary is depicted as adult Black woman seated in a curved wooden chair, shown in three-quarter profile with her torso angled left and her face turned back toward us. Her deep brown skin is modeled with warm highlights along the cheekbone and brow, while the background dissolves into smoky gray-browns that brighten behind her head, as if a spotlight were drifting through mist. She wears a loose, slate-blue dress painted in broad, soft strokes that suggest weight and drape more than crisp seams. Across her forearm lies a luminous shawl of golden bronze with cool turquoise folds with a satin-like sheen catching the strong light. Her hands rest together at her lap, fingers gently interlaced for a quiet anchor in the pose. A dark blue hat frames her face, trimmed with pink, coral, and orange flowers, green leaves, and pale blue feathers. Small light earrings glint at each ear. Mary’s mouth curves into a restrained, knowing smile, and her eyes turn slightly downward rather than meeting ours, keeping a measure of privacy inside the portrait. The left edge deepens into shadow, and the chair’s pale rail arcs behind her shoulder, emphasizing how Mary occupies space with calm, self-possessed presence. In 1943, with European travel cut off by war, Bischoff worked between Manhattan and a Hartland, Vermont home she purchased in 1942, staying committed to representational portraiture. Here, light becomes both respect and restraint to honor Mary’s style and dignity while pointing to what history withholds about her life.
February 3, 2026 at 9:39 PM
Reposted by KEW
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“Seated Woman” by Charles Bohannah (American) - Oil on canvas / c. 1940 - Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art (San Francisco, California) #WomenInArt #HolmesArtGallery #MelvinHolmesCollection #CharlesBohannah #Bohannah #AfricanAmericanArt #BlueskyArt #artText #BlackArt #art #AmericanArt
Made by American artist Charles Bohannah around 1940, “Seated Woman” sits near a pivotal threshold in Bohannah’s life as a Brooklyn-born artist trained through institutions like Cooper Union and the Art Students League. Around the beginning of World War II, he pursued technical training to support the war effort, then turned increasingly to photography during the war years, before returning to oil painting afterward. That layered skillset helps explain this portrait’s balance between softness and structure so it feels more observed than staged. It’s an intimate vertical portrait of a woman with deep brown skin and a full natural afro. She sits cross-legged on a wooden chair, one arm draped over the back, wearing a white button-down blouse and dark skirt with black heels. It’s a quiet, self-possessed pose that reads as both restful and watchful. Her calm gaze meets us against a warm reddish-brown background as soft light models her face and legs. The composition is close, direct, and less about surroundings than about presence so our attention stays with her posture, the angle of her head, and the calm, steady way she occupies the narrow canvas. Bohannah’s paint handling emphasizes form over spectacle with broad, confident passages to establish the figure, while smaller, more deliberate transitions describe facial structure and the contours of the hands and clothing. The sitter is presented as a complete person rather than a type. It is noted that the back of the painting bears the artist’s business card with a Brooklyn address. The card adds a grounding detail that this portrait is not only an image of a beautiful woman, but also evidence of an artist building a working life, advertising his practice, and insisting on professional visibility. In that light, the woman’s composed stillness becomes the painting’s argument that presence is power, and being seen on one’s own terms is a form of authorship.
February 5, 2026 at 3:09 PM
Reposted by KEW
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“Bathed Again by Southern Suns” by Chase Williamson (American) - Oil, glitter, and fabric on canvas / c. 2023-2025 - African American Museum of Dallas (Texas) #WomenInArt #WomenArtists #WomensArt #WomanArtist #ChaseWilliamson #artText #art #arte #BlackArt #AAMDallas #AfricanAmericanMuseumofDallas
A close-up, sunlit portrait shows a Black woman from the chest up beneath a canopy of green leaves set against a vivid, open blue sky. She has deep brown skin and long, center-parted black braids that cascade in thick ropes and softer curls over her shoulders and chest. Her eyes lower gently, focused downward while her expression feels quiet, reflective, and private. Warm orange-gold light floods her forehead, cheekbones, and nose, as if late-afternoon sun is pouring through leaves, creating a radiant glow on her face and a vertical flare of light at the center of her chest. She wears a rich green top, and a pale, textured wrap drapes loosely off her shoulders. Glitter specks are catch light like heat shimmer, pollen, or fine spray in summer air. The mixed materials make the scene feel tactile so light doesn’t just illuminate, but lands, clings, and sparkles. Chase Williamson is a Knoxville-based painter and MFA candidate at the University of Tennessee, whose work centers Black womanhood and marginalized identity through paint and fabric, shaped by her Middle Tennessee upbringing. Around the time this work entered the 28th Biennial Carroll Harris Simms National Black Art Exhibition, she was building national visibility through juried museum and regional exhibitions while also deepening her professional footprint through curatorial and residency experiences. “Bathed Again by Southern Suns” reads as both portrait and offering with “southern suns” naming a specific regional light (and a history) while “bathed again” suggests renewal, return, and self-reclamation. The glitter and fabric don’t merely decorate. They materialize atmosphere and memory, turning radiance into substance. Her downward gaze becomes a boundary as much as a mood and a choice to be seen on her own terms. Within Black expression and identity, the painting’s impact is its insistence on softness as strength and Black womanhood rendered luminous, grounded in place, and held with care.
February 7, 2026 at 3:51 AM
Reposted by KEW
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“She Who Knows” by Ayana Ross (American) - Oil on canvas / 2022 - Muskegon Museum of Art (Muskegon, Michigan) #WomenInArt #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #AyanaRoss #MuskegonMuseumofArt #BlackArt #art #artText #BlackArtist #AfricanAmericanArtist #AfricanAmericanArt #BlueskyArt #PortraitofaGirl
This full-length portrait by American artist Ayana Ross depicts a young Black girl standing against an off white background that becomes a multi-shade green checkerboard band, like a tiled floor. She has deep brown skin and a soft, rounded face, her natural hair forming a short, airy halo. She wears a crisp white, short-sleeved dress that flares gently at the hem, with white socks and black shoes. Her posture is steady and self-possessed with shoulders relaxed and steady gaze direct but calm. At her side she holds a bright red book with saturated color. Ross renders skin, fabric, and light with careful realism, letting the pared-down setting keep attention on the girl’s presence, dignity, and quiet authority. The palette stays restrained with creamy whites, muted greens, and a gentle shadow so that every decision reads intentional including the clean edge of the dress and the careful modeling of her legs. The simplicity also amplifies the ethical stakes of portraiture so we are asked to slow down, notice the child’s agency, and question any urge to project a story onto her. Based in Atlanta and recipient of the 2021 Bennett Prize, Ross uses realism as a platform for examining race, gender, identity, economics, and the value systems that decide who is believed. The title, “She Who Knows,” likely turns the portrait into a statement about authority because knowledge here is carried, guarded, and chosen. The red book, as the sharpest, most insistent color in the painting, probably signals learning as something precious and hard-won, not passively received. It invokes histories of restricted access to education, but the book also insists on the sitter’s agency. Her calm, unwavering gaze completes the message: she isn’t staged as “innocent” for our comfort. She stands as someone already aware, already informed, and already centered.
February 7, 2026 at 6:49 PM
Reposted by KEW
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“Mary Jane” by Noah Davis (American) - Oil and acrylic on canvas / 2008 - Philadelphia Museum of Art (Pennsylvania) #WomenInArt #PhiladelphiaMuseumOfArt #NoahDavis
#FigurativePainting #AmericanArt #art #artText #BlueskyArt #PortraitofaGirl #AmericanArt #MaryJane #AfricanAmericanArtist #BlackArt
The title “Mary Jane” carries a double meaning like a person’s name, but also the classic strap shoes that signal childhood and “proper” presentation. American artist Noah Davis gives that presentation dignity without sentimentality depicting a young Black girl standing with clasped hands and steady look directly at us. Behind her, a dense, mottled backdrop of pale greens and blacks like camouflage could mean both protection and threat at once: a world that can swallow you up, and a pattern you learn to navigate. She has deep brown skin and a calm, direct gaze. A white headscarf frames her face. She wears a white collared blouse under a light-blue vest, and a striped tan-and-white pinafore or apron over a pale-blue skirt. Her hands are clasped neatly at her waist. White knee socks with a couple faint stripes rise above black Mary Jane shoes. A dark horizontal band of floor at the bottom, grounds her small figure in a quiet, contained space. In 2008, Davis was deepening a practice that treated everyday Black life as worthy of the grand scale of painting and linking the intimate to the historical. His belief that art should be for everyone later shaped the Underground Museum (cofounded with Karon Davis). For the Philadelphia presentation of his retrospective, curator Eleanor Nairne said, “On every encounter, I am struck again by the potency of Noah Davis’s work.” The potency here is almost quiet, as we take in a child seen clearly, held at the center, and refusing to be blurred into the background.
February 8, 2026 at 6:37 AM
Reposted by KEW
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“Our Land” by Charles Wilbert White (American) - Tempera on panel / 1951 - Frye Art Museum (Seattle, Washington) #WomenInArt #FryeArtMuseum #CharlesWilbertWhite #CharlesWhite #SocialRealism #BlackWomanhood #art #artText #BlackArt #ArtBridges #AfricanAmericanArt #AfricanAmericanArtist #BlackArtist
An almost smiling Black woman fills the panel in a heroic, three-quarter pose, turned slightly while her gaze lifts above and beyond us. She wears a warm orange blouse that catches light in broad, velvety planes of tempera. Her skin is modeled in beautiful luminous browns. Her hands are large, strong, and carefully shaped as one grips a pitchfork and the other rests on her hip. Behind her, vertical bands suggest a door frame with slices of blue and yellow cutting through the middle ground, adding depth to the figure’s steady presence. The title “Our Land” is likely a collective claim that belonging is earned through work, care, and endurance and therefore cannot be denied. American artist Charles Wilbert White sharpened that argument in 1951, when he exhibited a group of paintings centered on Black women, insisting they be seen not as background labor but as the moral and cultural center of American life. The pitchfork deliberately reworks the visual language of American Regionalism (an echo of “American Gothic”), but here the tool is held by a Black woman whose enlarged hands and lifted gaze turn labor into authorship. Around this time White described art as a “weapon,” and his career made that conviction tangible. He actively moved between Chicago and New York’s activist art circles, learned from print and mural traditions, and built a lifelong practice of “images of dignity.” Later, in Los Angeles, his impact rippled outward through teaching by mentoring artists such as David Hammons and Kerry James Marshall. He helped reshape what American figuration could hold including history, politics, tenderness, and pride, all at once.
February 6, 2026 at 6:44 AM
Reposted by KEW
cnn.com
Even with the so-called "drawdown," many Minneapolis area activists say little has changed since hundreds of agents left and they're preparing for prolonged resistance. The anxiety remains palpable after two fatal shootings of US Citizens by federal agents in January. https://cnn.it/4rAFZ34
February 8, 2026 at 1:40 PM