I made the discovery on Facebook of an artist in, as she puts it on her website, "West by god Virginia," who has taken on an immense challenge. The day after Ruth Bader Ginsberg died, she was feeling low so she picked up her brushes and painted a portrait of the icon while listening to podcasts about her life. It made her feel so much better that she decided a big commitment was in order, so she thought, since there were exactly 100 days left until the end of the year, that she would challenge herself to paint a portrait a day! They are all "badass women," known for their accomplishments, their diplomacy, their artistry, including inventors, innovators, politicians, scientists, musicians, a little of everything.
Since she started the project she has received not only a lot of attention (including local television coverage) but a lot of suggestions for whom to include in the array, some with complete histories of their lives and accomplishments. She is keeping it spontaneous by choosing each morning who she will paint that day, and the paintings take from three to more than 12 hours apiece to complete, depending on their complexity, all while trying to live the rest of her life on the side. I have immense respect for this 39-year-old painter! (I often wonder what would have happened had I kept painting at 19 instead of deserting it until I was 45. This is a good example...)
I've been following the project and have had some online interaction with her, and I decided yesterday that she deserved to have her own portrait painted. So here is Sassa, another badass woman for the gallery.
Daler Rowney acrylic inks, pencil, Uniball Vision pen, India ink, Uniball Signo white gel pen, white gesso, on 140-lb. Fluid watercolor paper, 9x12.
