Named for Picasso’s famed painting of prostitutes, this series reimagines Picasso’s five anonymous, mask-like women as individuals. Each portrait is of an emerging woman artist, drawn from life using Sharpie on wood panels, then carved in relief to make a printmaking woodcut. Woodcut panels are objects of beauty that are able to reproduce versions of themselves, not unlike both artists and women. As woodcuts, they become literal “working girls,” a play on the euphemism for prostitutes, but also a wish for success, as productive artists are often accused of creative prostitution. Wood panels were also selected as a medium to reference the appropriated wooden African masks that two of Picasso’s women wear. Unlike the working women he depicted, these working artists are not hiding behind masks or pretending to be what they are not. They are highly self-actualizing creatives, depicted in an iconographic style, intended to recall an altar tryptic, another well-wish, a hope that their work lives beyond them, needed because female artists so rarely become cultural icons. Beneath each panel, images of the artist’s work, a short biography, and a QR code linking to their website allow the viewer to explore the incredible art these working women have created.
