A Talk with the Artist

The gaze from a painting often captivates people. Books have been devoted to the Mona Lisa’s playful and observant eyes. We often want to avoid the eyes from a portrait that seem to follow us around the room. Some faces stare or smile at us so that we wish to know more about the people behind all of that paint—the artist and model(s). We want to hear their stories.

Canadian painter Ilene Sova focuses on portraiture of women as well as expressing a shared female experience. On her website, she says that women are often censored by their cultures and society, afraid to tell their own life challenges and joys. As her Artist Statement says, Sova’s work has evolved from “telling the untold negative stories of the female experience” to including “a stronger, more confrontational protagonist.”

Sova also expresses the limitations concerning women as fine artists. She writes in an e-mail, “I often find when we speak about our careers the impression is always of lesser or ‘the other’ or ‘the exception’ in terms of how we are viewed (ie. when [I] meet someone new and…say, ‘I am a painter.’ People will often respond with ‘oh how much money do you make painting houses?’ It doesn’t occur to them that I could be a fine artist—it is reduced always to the lesser position.”

The limiting inferences, often made by people about women artists, guide Sova to express the social constrictions within her paintings of women. On her website, we find that women are “at a high disadvantage in the art world” with “only 1 in 10 female artists… actually…becom(ing) a professional artist” and “only 10% of the art in modern sections of museums… (being created) by women.”

Sova paints multiple works in order to create a series. Usually, the series has a common theme with different women models for each painting. In her new Untitled series, Sova’s models capture the viewer. The direct and intimate gaze captured in most of the paintings allows the viewer to interact with the subjects in the paintings. It’s as though you are passing by one of the women on a cold and windy street or you are sharing an intimate conversation with another woman or turning to receive a fleeting, goodbye glance. The paintings bring us into a personal space with each woman. Sova projected a psychological mood into each painting. Not only do the expressions on the faces of the women conjure a change in attitude, but the highlighting colors of Sova’s palette effect the model and the viewer of the paintings. “Katherine” seems to communicate a sad innocence. “Emily” gives us an uncertain but curious side-ways question, while “Lola” shares a smile of confidence and determination.

As compared to Sova’s previous series, the women’s faces in the new work are physically closer. Like the women in her previous paintings, these women stare into the eyes of the beholder. The new women are also larger than her previous work (the paintings measure 36×36 centimeters), a scale that she intentionally sought as an expression of her ideas. It was so important to this series that when I failed to discuss it in our phone interview, Sova wrote to me about it later:

“I have always been thinking a lot about women and their relationship to the size of their body and the idea that there is so much pressure for women to be smaller (loose weight etc) in popular culture. This essentially equates to taking up LESS SPACE. And in terms of how this could work on a psychological level—always wanting to be smaller and not take up too much space in a room or in relationship to other people.

“The second thing is that women are often being ‘reduced to the smallest denominator’ in how they are treated in language and culture in general (eg. A kitchenette has the feminine ‘ette’ attached to it because it is smaller and less, in turn less important and useful than it’s opposite word ‘kitchen’….So—having said all that…the scale is to make women more improtant, take up more space, be larger than life, become giants, be monumental, and in doing so increase their importance in a culture that is constantly trying to make them smaller.”

In her earliest work, “epic series” (1996-2000), the models are placed within a dark, domestic setting that seems to close in around them. The two following series question identity and appearance by utilizing symbols of pop culture. In “Blue Wig Series” (2000) and “Tiara Series” (2001), the women in the portraits face the camera wearing either a blue wig or a tiara. The position of the models against a flat, solid color background is reminiscent of mug shots and/or passport photos.

Sova says about this “deliberate choice” that she was affected by Barbara Kruger’s image “No Progress in Pleasure”, which includes the text “Your gaze hits the side of my face.” Sova points out that women in art history are painted from the male gaze. “It’s usually that the women are not looking at the viewer,” she says during our phone interview. “They are turned away. I made a very deliberate choice for my women to be looking directly at you and to be confrontational.”

The series “Engaged in Transit” (2001-2004) shows a series of women each in front of a different Toronto subway stop (the name of the stop is behind them). This series, as well as “Berlin Series” (2006), focuses on women in particular places, even if Sova doesn’t include scenes from that place. The women represent an urban space. The “Berlin Series” demonstrates Sova’s desire to communicate the strength of women in their environments. On the website, she writes that these women “who had grown up (until adolescence) in a divided country…had amazing confidence and eloquence in vocalizing their views” (concerning “German feminism, racism, and the immigration policies in Europe.”) She continues to communicate strength in her new series; however, the changes in her painting techniques are evident.