Jill Soukup - Curator

I want to thank Showings Fine Art for this opportunity to participate in an exhibition of women who I highly respect. I also want to thank all the participating artists for a great show.

Being involved with a show featuring women artists is something I've been thinking about for some time, and I was thrilled when Showings Fine Art invited me to curate such an event. This opportunity caused me to really ask myself why the concept of an exhibit featuring work by women was so important to me. While I’d never considered an all-women show to have a

connection with the concept of women’s rights, I found myself face to face with it.

At a very young age I was acutely aware of an undertone of inequity towards women. I never experienced this unfairness firsthand, yet I took it quite seriously. There is a song that remains etched in my head some thirty years after participating in a grade school play, “I’m a liberated woman and I’m here to stay. I’m a liberated woman and I’m equal to a man in every way.” I was out to prove that tune right! I gleaned great pleasure in outrunning the boys in a good footrace or outsmarting them in a board game. Fortunately, this early, misguided competiveness towards the male population has matured into the simple recognition that men and women have distinct, yet cherished, differences. And, thanks to generations before us who strove for freedom and equality, women in the U.S. today are making choices and have freedoms that are historically—and globally—unprecedented.

But this really is not a show about feminism or women’s rights. The moving force behind the exhibition is simply to celebrate women as professional artists. It’s a statement about resilience, perseverance, creativity and grace. Women are still the minority in the art profession, but we are flourishing. Every time I pick up an art publication I discover another formidable woman artist. Celebrating Women Artists honors the

tremendous success of women artists—a success, as I discovered, that cannot go without recognition and gratitude to generations of women who labored to give us this gift of freedom to pursue and promote our art.

Jill Soukup

“The paintings I have included in the show represent recent architectural insights. I'm moving from broad city landscapes to intimate reflections of smaller constructions. I may concentrate on just one building or a small portion of another. I'm increasingly drawn to what might be considered the mundane: repetitive windows, fire escapes, water heaters, pipes—the portions that are usually overlooked or lack visual appeal to the average passer-by. For me, however, they are vibrant and exciting, and in painting these images I hope to capture and convey the beauty that I see.”