Monday Inspiration: Sylvia Daoust

Sylvia Daoust, My Brother, 1921 (source)

Sylvia Daoust, (source)

Sylvia Daoust, My Head, 1930 (source)

Sylvia Daoust (1902-2004) Studied in Montreal and also in Europe, She taught sculpture in Montreal and Anatomy and drawing in Quebec. Her works are all over Quebec- but they are hard to find on line in any sort of reputable form ( I usually try to source images from museums or other well researched places- but I had to use yelp for the image of My Head, which I thought was so striking I wanted to include it anyway. The Image of My Brother is sourced from a journal article because the image is better quality, but I found the title and date from another source- my apologies if it's not correct.

I think that highlights an issue with Women Artists, Because their work is/was seldom or sparsely collected by major Galleries, it can be difficult to find them online in a well documented way. They are often snapshots from someones phone, instead of professional images in a virtual museum, and as such the real documentation is often lost.  For example the image of My head says it's painted plaster- and that might be so- but it looks a lot like bronze to me- and because my source is yelp, I'm not really very trusting of it, so I won't write down the material, and it goes undocumented.

We're living in an internet age and for years the struggle has been to get more work by Women into galleries, but now I wonder if we should be taking a different approach. A proper Virtual Museum  of Women's Art would likely get far visitors than a real brick and mortar museum. At the last kids art class  I taught I was surprised to find that the 12 year old kids I was teaching had never been to an art gallery, art is not really a priority in rural schools, I know, but still, I expected at least one field trip- there is a small gallery a half hour away, but that is not so. That sort of shook me up, and got me wondering how many adults in my area have never been to an art gallery, more than I realized I think. So- if people are going to the internet for their art, it sort of makes representation of Women's art on Google much more relevent, don't you think?

Throughout this little Canadian artist challenge of mine I've been thinking- "well of course there's no more than a few photos of the work- the women were not collected by major museums".  Now I'm wondering what would happen if we reversed that process, and gave them proper space on the Internet as the first step to getting the names out there, and then that in turn would make a demand for their works to be collected and preserved in bigger galleries.

Okay- Brainstorm done- sorry for Hi-jacking your post Sylvia Daoust- your work is phenomenal- or what I can see of it on yelp.

Monday Inspiration 2014 is all about Canadian artists. Each Monday I'll pick a new one to profile- If you can think of any that you think I ought to look up- please let me know in the comments- I'd love to hear from you. You can find a list of the artists I've done so far here.