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Click thumbnail to enlarge Carole Shepheard
First studying at Elam 196467 (Honours in Stage Design), then 'gestating' for almost ten years, Shepheard is one of many women artists whose art-flight only really took off after an unsatisfactory marital situation had been confronted, children began school, and the inevitable conflicts of (wife) mother, lover, woman, artist, became resolved, and, for her, happily integrated. These briefly-charted biographical notes are essential for understanding the characteristics and impetus behind Shepheard's work. For as a self-defined feminist artist she is now totally engaged in a conscious artistic exploration and expression of her experience as a woman and feminist in our society, where, to quote again from Parker and Pollock's seminal work, in their chapter headed 'Crafty Women and the Hierarchy of the Arts', 'The sex of the artist does matter. It conditions the way art is seen and discussed. This is indisputable.' Shepheard is one of a growing network of feminist artists here and elsewhere who are not only articulating the different position and place within history and culture (from men) that women occupy, but are attempting at times to tackle this in a politically challenging sense. Understanding this intention is crucial. There are, for me, varying levels of engagement (intentionally) in this concern in her recent art. Some pieces speak more challengingly to a politically feminist aesthetic sensibility than others: although all her works successfully challenge the pejorative connotations applied to traditional arts (cf. the text at the beginning of this article).
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