To celebrate International Women’s Day this year, we asked our artists to tell us about the women they look up to and how they have inspired them, whether it was an artist, a relative, or an important figure in their lives:

Holly Harrison

“An artist who never fails to inspire me is Eva Hesse. Her work has a different aesthetic than mine, but I love how open and inventive she was with her materials and how committed she was to her process. I’m fascinated by how quietly riveting her sculptures are, and how she used mundane, fragile materials and transformed them into strange and compelling shapes. On more than one occasion, I’ve been drawn to a piece at an exhibition, only to find out that it’s one of hers.” - Holly Harrison

Susan Murie

“I love Helen Frankenthaler's work for its beauty, innovation and scale. In recent years, I made special trips to see her work; to the Art Institute of Chicago for Helen Frankenthaler Prints: The Romance of a New Medium, in 2018 and The Provincetown Museum of Art for Abstract Climates: Helen Frankenthaler in Provincetown, in 2019. Her free and experimental painting continues to inspire me to try new things in my own work.” - Susan Murie

Lisa Foster

“I am inspired by women who persevere and overcome, to live, love, teach, lead, create, nurture, challenge, protest, sing, play and in their own unique way, leave the world better than they found it.” - Lisa Foster

Ariel Basson Freiberg

“There are so many women who inspire me each day, but the most impactful is my mother. Her creative and curious nature opened the doors to my imagination countless times. Her studies and love of art history brought us to countless museums growing up. During this very challenging year of pandemic, she continues to be incredible supportive and inspiring, with our long phone calls discussing topics from Herodian art and history to her childhood memories and currently daily survival stories. Her generosity with her friends and the women of her community is well known. Much love to my mom, Linda Basson Freiberg!” - Ariel Basson Freiberg

Katelyn Ledford

“Vija Celmins has inspired me since I was in undergrad. She was one of the first contemporary artists I was introduced to and I immediately fell in love with her sublime paintings and drawings. Her unabashed use of extreme photorealism helped give me permission to also practice Photorealism, a sentiment that has carried through in my practice to this day.” - Katelyn Ledford

Kristina McComb

"While I could talk endlessly about so many women who have inspired me, I can’t help but think about the person who I have never wanted to disappoint. A lot of who I am as a person, which is reflected in my artwork, came from my Grandmother. Growing up I spent a lot of time with her learning to bake, learning about gardening, making puzzles, and playing in the woods behind my grandparents’ home. Before deciding to pursue art, I thought of pursuing cooking because of her and even worked in a kitchen during the summers I was in art school. Some things that I have carried over into my art practice are, if you’re going to do something, give it your all, and to remain true to yourself." - Kristina McComb

Amanda Wachob

“First person who popped into my head is Jadé Fadojutimi. I’ve been a fan for a few years now, her paintings are so wonderful. She is the youngest person to be collected by the Tate!” - Amanda Wachob

Coral Woodbury

“I have turned to so many female artists for guidance and insight in my work, and courage for myself. But let me reach back 500 years to Renaissance Florence to Artemisia Gentileschi. Artemisia suffered grave repression, injustice, rape, and torture; she lost her mother at age 12, and 4 of her 5 children. Yet she was bold and strong and sure. ‘I will show Your Illustrious Lordship what a woman can do,’ she wrote to a patron. ‘You will find the spirit of Caesar in the soul of a woman.’ And damn, could she paint!” - Coral Woodbury

Natalia Wróbel

“Georgia O'Keeffe has always inspired me for her unique vision, independent spirit, and fearlessness. She moved from New York to New Mexico in 1949 on her own and built a studio out in the countryside. She forged a strong spiritual connection to the landscape that is illuminated in her powerful paintings.” - Natalia Wróbel

As a gallery, we are constantly inspired by getting out of the gallery and seeing art. Every couple of months we have studio visits with our represented artists to see what projects they are working on. Many gallery visitors do not get the chance to visit an artist’s studio (although we always encourage it!), so here is a behind the scenes look into our time with our artist Ariel Basson Freiberg:

Ariel Basson Freiberg’s studio, Somerville, MA

Abigail Ogilvy Gallery: Thank you for hosting us, Ariel! To kick off our questions, let’s start with your schedule: What time of the day do you usually feel the most creative and do your best work? Do you stick to a regular schedule or paint whenever you have time?

Ariel Basson Freiberg: Typically, I’m in the studio four days a week. I find I work best when I have a large chunk of time. I’ll take several short breaks, but with an 8- to 16-hour day I can work with the whole surface of the canvas. I prefer to paint wet into wet so that I can make changes swiftly. It’s a balancing act scheduling time between my studio practice, my teaching schedule, and my responsibilities for the Post Baccalaureate program in studio art at Brandeis.

AOG: Do you have any daily routines that help your productivity? And/or any pre- or post-work rituals?

Ariel Basson Freiberg, Wasnowwhen, oil on linen, 42 x 34 in., 2016

ABF: Music is an important part of setting the tone for my studio activities. Lately, I’ve been gearing up with a mix of Felt, Grimes, Kate Bush, and the score for Sem Mim of Grupo Corpo. I also do some quick drawings to warm up before painting. I see mixing color as part of “the making” stage. I don’t really have any post-work rituals, except the obligatory brush clean up and most likely will take a photo or two of the latest works in progress.

AOG: What type/how many brushes do you use on average for each piece? Any other tools?

ABF: I use ten to thirty brushes, palette knives, scrapers, rags, and sometime brayers/rollers on the canvas and panels. I love bristle brushes for impasto painting and red stable and synthetic for smoother passages.

AOG: When you feel stuck, what do you do to become inspired again?

ABF: Inspiration is vast and complicated. The ritual of showing up in the studio is key for working through delays and hiccups. Sometimes a conversation with a partner, friend, or mentor will spark the fire. Sometimes, it’s going to see art by my favorites at one of the local museums. Other days, it’s reading poetry, like the collection Twerk by Latasha N. Nevada Diggs. I also mine dance performances for new ways of considering bodily gestures. I attend one or two dance classes a week, and I incubate the energy generated there for the studio.

AOG: Do you ever use models for your poses?

ABF: Sometimes I invite friends to model for me. I usually make drawings, which then may or may not be used in a future painting project. Most of the time I do not use models. My relationship with the canvas is very intimate, and I find it’s easier to work without having to worry about a model.

Ariel Basson Freiberg, Pegasus, oil on linen, 48 x 36 in., 2018

AOG: Your work is often considered bold and vibrant in terms of color palette. What colors inspire you to most? Do you perceive any specific colors in a certain way?

ABF: Vibrancy and color contrast are most inspiring for me. Fields of toxic green with a whiplash of pinks is forever seductive. Sometimes, I want the figures in my paintings to live deep in a mono-color world like in Standing Ovation. The moments of chromatic shifts occur in the accessories, and small adornments in and around the body pushed to an extreme posture. For me, color imbues a great deal of meaning. I draw many of my colors from amulets from my family heritage, fashion advertisements, the glam malls I grew up with in Houston, TX, and the landscape of my grandparent’s home in Ramat Gan, Israel.

AOG: You come from an Iraqi-Jewish heritage, have you visited Israel and if so, what did the visit(s) mean for you? How did they inspire you?

ABF: Most of my extended family currently live in Israel and Montreal. All of my family fled Iraq in the ‘50s and ‘70s. My family in Montreal kept close to their Iraqi identity, speaking their dialect all the time. My mom was only three years old, and my uncle eight days old, when they left Baghdad for Israel. As refugees from a Middle Eastern country, it was important for the youth to embody “Israeli” culture. Since the whole family had to revoke their Iraqi citizenships, they had to remake and modify themselves, from their names and language to their behavior to assimilate to their new home.
From a very young age, I would visit my family near Tel Aviv. It was the place I was always accepted and embraced. I loved the feel of the red clay soil on my feet and the dumplings my grandmother would make, along with the sweet milk and date cookies.
The will to make art is a feeble attempt at forging an understanding and unity between the high-contrast, surreal states of two disparate cultures: Texas and Iraqi Israeli. It took years to see how complicated our Iraqi identity was. It was privately fully embodied by my family yet publicly severed and veiled as much as possible. Only as a late teen did I realize I spoke two different languages when I thought I was only speaking Hebrew.

We were so grateful for the time spent at Vernon Street Studios with Ariel Basson Freiberg, thanks for having us!

Ariel Basson Freiberg, Standing Ovation, oil on linen, 56 x 78 in., 2018

Ariel Basson Freiberg, Double Twist, oil on linen, 48 x 36 in., 2018