Artist's Statement

Excerpted from a longer piece published in Feminist Studies, Vol. 19, No. 1
© 1993 by Helen Glazer

When I was an art student I thought I could gain authority as a woman artist by adopting a style so intellectually tough-minded that no one would be able to tell if my paintings had been created by a woman or a man. Good art, I reasoned, would be judged on its own merits, without regard to the sex of its creator. Without seeing the irony of it, I imagined that if my work was of high enough quality, people would assume a man had done it until discovering otherwise.

I've never stopped asking myself questions about where I stand in a society where men still hold most of the authority and the power. I have changed my mind about attempting to create a genderless art, however. I've surrendered to the fact that I can't have it both ways--I can't make images with impact while suppressing my female point of view. I have decided that to create images centered on female protagonists and issues in the life of a woman is one of the best contributions I can make toward a future where a woman's goals of achievement and self-actualization will not be in conflict.

In late 1987, I began a series of drawings and paintings of women observing all-male rituals and games, which included The Training of Specialists. The series gradually took shape as a group of satirical observations about competitiveness and power plays within hierarchies and about the notion of man's mastery over nature. Aside from the humor in them, the drawings also express my ambivalence about participation in competitive power structures. Including the female observer in the scene encourages the viewer to ask: "Even if I were invited to join in here, would I really want to?" The works in this series raise questions about power--who has it, who wants it, what is real power and what is illusion, and what are the costs to those who play the game as it is currently constructed?