By Colter Ruland
The female form has been a major subject of art since its very beginnings. From the Venus figurines to modern portraits, history has long looked at women. However, artist Donna Isham doesn’t shy away from the complexities of portraying womanhood. Instead, she embraces them.
As Isham says: “As a woman painting women, I hope to show the many facets that everybody possesses.”
For Isham, gender is both the crux of her work and the conduit for examining emotion. Just as ancient artifacts hold mysteries, Donna Isham art lives comfortably within the realm of the unknowable.
From Silence to Expression
Isham has always been painting, but when she was young, she viewed her creativity as replica rather than creation. Consequently, she decided not to go to art school. Being completely self-taught, she went into museum studies instead.
For years, she was content with showing the work of others. In fact, she withheld her work from the public, terrified of revealing herself. Eventually, her relationship with the outside world began to change.
She admits: “It became too painful to not actually paint and to not actually put myself out there.” Now, as the President of the Artists for Human Rights Foundation, she reveals work that is less about clarity and more about ambiguity.
Obscuring and Revealing
In her work, abstraction might obfuscate the female form, but it also reveals multitudes. Isham portrays women as both sexual and distant, colorful and muted. Rather than veering away from stereotypes, she unravels them.
She explains her process: “Often I’m obscuring and then revealing and then obscuring and then revealing.”
This technique is visible in the layers she works and reworks, sometimes scraping them with a palette knife. For instance, in Japanese Girl, the face seems eroded by this layering. This leaves us wondering if the woman is pensive or simply exhausted.
Pushing Boundaries
In pieces like Abstract in Pastel, boundaries are pushed to the very edge. Here, body parts are abstracted into shapes both natural and unnatural. While the arrangement oozes sexuality, the pastel colors mimic a butcher shop.
This is the great freedom of Donna Isham art. She is not interested in providing answers. Instead, she is interested in suggestion.
She calls her work “a dialogue.” This means her work is a way of understanding herself and the world. Ultimately, there are no compromises. Her work is personal, imbued with life and all its intricacies.
