Female Fantasy Artists

I have just sent the IFX team a lengthy ramble on the subject of gender equality in arts because I felt that women were severely underrepresented in the latest issue (#118 - it featured a whopping three women and 41 men)

While farting around on the internet trying to find some more info on women artists and such I came across the following two websites that I think can be of interest to anyone enjoying good fantasy art:

kirileonard.com/tag/women-in-fantasy-illustration/
This is a series of interviews with female fantasy illustrators (17 in all, so far)

juliedillon.tumblr.com/post/66217741265/...mazing-women-artists
This is a blog post listing a good sized number of female artists and showing one or two posts from each. The links to those artists own websites or blogs are sometimes broken but once you've found the name of someone who's art you like, I'm sure google will be your friend

Of course the galleries of the two women who set up the above pages are well worth visiting too!

Well worth a look Charlotte. Lovely stuff from all represented.

This sort of subject comes up quite often; sexism in fantasy art. But usually it is to do with the way women are represented as art, not the artists themselves. It would be better to have an equal ratio of men to women. It could simply be the availability of these artists, or the ratio of female artists to male artists that causes the imbalance?

Judging by the forums though, it seems that there is a fair balance of the sexes on this site.

Nice to see some of my favourites on those lists.
And I didn't know that Euclase was female. Does that even matter?

lol Valence I guess the point is it really doesn't matter On that blog post with several examples there are certainly some who's art I'd be tempted to call more "girly" but there are also pieces I'd never ever be able to guess they were made by women. When I was at the Nordic Light Workshop that Dave Brasgalla arranged in Stockholm a few years back I was actually surprised to see that several of the male participants did really "girly" stuff (cute, colourful and so on) in their free time, if not at work.

Dom, thinking that women artists are fewer than men in the fields of fantasy and sci fi is presicely why I don't usually mind that men are overrepresented in the magazine. But I'm starting to think I've been wrong. I did some googling, as mentioned, and it does seem that women are fewer in the gaming industry, for instance. But overall it seems there are perhaps even more female artists in the (western) world today than male ones, and still they are underrepresented in almost all art venues. I'm guessing it's the same thing within fantasy and sci fi. Even if women pros don't make up 50 % of fantasy artists I doubt very much they make up less than 10 %. In other words the imbalance isn't simply due to the ratio of available artists but to a tendency of society to value the art of men higher.

Also judging from that googling I did, the low ratio of women in the gaming industry isn't down to women not being interested in the work but in them not wanting to be exposed to harrassment and sexism, which seems to happen rather frequently when working in that field. The arguments against female painters seem to be the same that have been used against women in all professions at some point in time. They sleep their way to the top, they can't handle the responsibilities of both home/children and work or they simply aren't capable of painting as well as men (just like they used to be considered incapable of the same level of intellectual understanding). It's just a bunch of stupid arguments, but regardless of how stupid and old fashioned they may seem, they're apparently still in use.

A couple of "favourites" of the arguments I saw when googling was the "incapable of handling both home and art career" - as if male painters through the ages have been more capable, when in fact they've just not had to do any household work or diaper changes! (Luckily that's changing.) - and the statement from an apparently successful 77 year old painter who's name I've already forgotten, that "women just cannot paint" - his art is honestly the absolutely most ugly thing I've ever ever seen. Dunno why people would pay for it, but I guess it's just because they expect someone else to pay even more for it in the future.

Sorry for the ramble
Oh and you're right: the discussion does usually center on whether the art itself is sexist. And that made it really difficult for me to find much on the situation for artists in the sci fi and fantasy fields - all the searches came up with images and image discussions instead.

Artemesia Gentileschi's work is on a par with Caravaggio in it's use of dark lighting (and in some cases gore!) And for years all her work was attributed to her father. So it's not just modern fantasy stuff that gets pigeonholed according to gender.

Definately not Valence - I think it's more a case of "inherited pigeonholing" today and gross manchauvinism in the past than outright discrimination today (in most cases). Even if it's still discrimination when people aren't aware they're doing it.

Found an article through Facebook today ( jabberworks.livejournal.com/691786.html ) about how book illustrators get discriminated because the "system" (databases that media use when referring to the books) pretty much only list the book writers, even thought the illustrators have done half the job. And that sometimes the writers even get nominated for illustrators' awards because nobody has listed the illustrator's name!
Discrimination abounds!
To arms!
There so many injustices I dunno where to start fighting!
I think I must take a nap...

Btw, I received issue #119 today and had a quick flip-through and I'm happy to say there are considerably more women in this issue. (Obviously nothing to do with my letter since this issue must have been finished by the time sent it!)

My letter (or most of it) was actually published in issue #120 of IFX. I think Claire's reply was a little meh but anyways, today they posted a link to the muddy colours blog on facebook which I though was worth a read (and then I posted a long rant on the FB thread so I'll shut up here).
muddycolors.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/what-...omen-characters.html

In the comments section there's also a link to this blog post which I also thought was interesting:
www.itinthed.com/16328/what-taking-my-da...ook-store-taught-me/

Just got the latest issue and saw that they're still talking about this. The entire letters page is about the response to your complaint.

Which issue is that Valence?

122. Princess Leia on the cover.
And there are quite a few female artists inside in the FxPose sections.