ARTIST STATEMENT
In this series of 5×5″ nude self-portraits, I pay tribute to three groundbreaking women artists—Mickalene Thomas, Yayoi Kusama, and Helen Frankenthaler—by placing my own body in conversation with their visual languages. Each work reflects on intersectionality, mental health, and the politics of visibility through layered, symbolic compositions that respond to both personal and structural unrest. The Mickalene Thomas tribute features a bold, patterned background inspired by her celebration of Black femme power, with a wooden female symbol slicing through the portrait—an emblem of both identity and disruption. It reflects the complexities of race and gender, and the persistent framing and fragmentation of women’s bodies in art and society. In the Kusama-inspired piece, a blue dotted background channels her language of repetition and infinity. My figure is partially obscured by a wooden window shape, echoing themes of containment, mental health, and the blurred line between self and perception—a nod to Kusama’s lifelong resistance through radical vulnerability. For the Helen Frankenthaler homage, an abstract, expressive background mimics her stained canvases. Here, my body is crossed out by a wooden X, representing censorship and the erasure of women’s voices. Yet, like Frankenthaler, I claim space in abstraction, resisting silence with embodied presence. Together, these works explore how the female body can be both subject and site of dissent—channeling feminist legacies while envisioning new modes of selfhood, visibility, and artistic resistance.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Sally Jane Brown is an artist, curator, and writer currently based in Morgantown. Her artwork including drawing, painting, and performance, explores womanhood, motherhood, and the body. She has exhibited her work in spaces nationally and in the UK. She has won two awards for illustration for Intimates and Fools and Leaves of Absence, both with poetry by Laura Madeline Wiseman. She also illustrated What We Do in the Hollows with poetry by Renée K. Nicholson. She has participated in artist residencies in Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and Buenos Aires. Her writing has been published in Hyperallergic, Women’s Art Journal, and Panorama, among others. She has curated group shows in Omaha, Nashville, Pittsburgh, and Morgantown. She has been awarded several grants for her artistic and scholarly work, and presented at multiple national arts conferences. She holds a Bachelor of Arts-Studio Art, a Master of Public Administration, and a Master of Arts- Art History and Feminist Theory. She is a former member of the College Art Association National Committee on Women in the Arts, edited the online journal Les Femmes Folles, and currently serves as Curator for West Virginia University Libraries, Contributing Writer for the Borshch of Art Discover Database, and art editor for Thimble Literary Magazine.
© Sally Jane Brown