Women of Abstraction Series
A continuing exploration of women who reshaped abstract painting across geography, history, and artistic language.
Women of Abstraction Series
The Women of Abstraction Series is an invitation into a rich and fascinating world where painting, art history, personal expression, and creative discovery meet.
This is not only a series about artists. It is a series about ideas, courage, innovation, and the many ways women helped shape modern art across New York, California, Europe, and beyond.
Along the way, you will encounter striking personalities, bold techniques, unexpected stories, changing styles, and the cultural moments that gave rise to them. We explore gesture, color, composition, intuition, structure, freedom, and the many visual languages of abstraction.
There are conversations about museums, important exhibitions, overlooked legacies, and the ways art history continues to be rewritten today.
Whether you are new to painting, returning after many years, or already experienced, this series offers something meaningful at every level.
You may come for inspiration, for knowledge, for the pleasure of looking, or for the desire to create more freely.
Most likely, you will leave with a wider horizon, a deeper eye, and a renewed sense of what painting can be.
A thoughtful, stimulating, welcoming series, alive with possibility.
Close-up of a large oil painting ~ Elisabeth Vismans
Developed through six years of teaching abstraction, artist studies, and art history explorations.
Women of Abstraction Series
Six pathways into abstract painting through the women who shaped it.
New York Fire
Gesture, emotion, postwar intensity
The energy of postwar New York, where painting became bold, physical, and emotionally charged.
Artists may include:
Joan Mitchell, Pat Passlof, Lee Krasner, Grace Hartigan, Elaine de Kooning
California Light
Space, experimentation, freedom
West Coast abstraction shaped by openness, light, and experimentation.
Artists may include:
Joan Mitchell, Pat Passlof, Lee Krasner, Grace Hartigan, Elaine de Kooning
European Voices
Lyricism, structure, modern vision
Women artists who brought poetic, intellectual, and structural approaches to abstraction.
Artists may include:
Jay DeFeo, Joan Brown, Sonia Gechtoff, Deborah Remington, Mary Heilmann
Hidden Figures
Rediscovery, legacy, overlooked brilliance
Overlooked artists whose contributions deserve renewed attention.
Artists may include:
Pat Passlof, Perle Fine, Judith Godwin, Charlotte Park, others
Living Voices
Contemporary women shaping abstraction today
Contemporary women continuing to expand the language of abstraction.
Fearless Abstraction
Courage, freedom, finding your voice
A studio-centered path toward freedom, confidence, and your own visual voice.
Possible sessions: Gesture & Movement, Color & Atmosphere, Geometry & Structure, Symbol & Mystery, Intuitive Process Painting, Surface & Texture.
Fearless Abstraction was the seed of the broader Women of Abstraction Series, now now a studio-centered path toward confidence, freedom, and personal voice.
Gestural painting on canvas 30×40″ ~ Elisabeth Vismans
Why do so many people come to abstraction later in life?
Perhaps because something shifts.
The need to please begins to fade.
The old rules lose their grip.
Perfection becomes less interesting than truth.
Many people arrive at this work after years of doing what was expected of them — raising families, building careers, being responsible, being practical, being everything to everyone.
And then, quietly, a question appears:
What about me?
Abstract painting can be a surprising answer.
Not because it is easy.
Not because there are no challenges.
But because it offers space.
Space to explore.
Space to feel.
Space to make marks that do not need permission.
Space to discover what is still alive inside you.
You do not need to know your style.
You do not need to be “good at art.”
You do not need to have started earlier.
Sometimes a personal voice becomes clearer precisely when life has taught you who you are.
If something in you is asking for more freedom, more honesty, or more room to breathe, I invite you to explore the series.
If this speaks to you, I invite you to → Explore the Series.