Florine Stettheimer, Portrait of My Mother, 1925

Florine Stettheimer tells her mother’s story using flattened shapes set atop a patterned background. It’s an homage and a modernist masterpiece,

Do I exist? Am I important? Am I beautiful? Find validation in the art of Mickalene Thomas. Mickalene Thomas redefines female physical perfection in a collage-inspired painting of a nude woman with a gaze that transfixes her audience.

Keough’s dimensionless painting is deceptively simple, full of layered meaning, and funny. Have you ever noticed that when you look at a painting, your eye moves in a circle, always looking at the same details in the same order? This painting, which looks like a simple line illustration of an armless mannequin, fills me with ideas and emotions in a very specific order. In this episode I talk about Keogh’s methods and why they inspire so much thought and self-reflection.

Lisa Yuskavage’s painting of a semi-nude young woman lost in thought fills me with excitement and makes me wonder, “am I supposed to be feeling like this?” and “can other people read my feelings as I look at it?” In this episode I talk about Yuskavage’s themes and methods, and why it can be simultaneously so difficult and enjoyable to look at her work.

This 85-year-old woman is not happy, and I know exactly how she feels. This nude self-portrait by the twentieth-century painter Maria Lassnig, painted in glowing colors, captures a moment of desperation in the artist’s life. In this episode I explore what the artist was thinking when she made this painting and why it meant so much to me.