Title
Creation Date
2018
Preview
Medium
acrylic on medium density fiberboard
Rights
© Ann Margaret Bell, 2018. Photo Credit: Allison Corona.
Exhibit Images
Series Title: The Marianismo Series
Keywords
cooking, acrylic, illustration, painting, metal, backyard
Artist Statement
With this series I wanted to express my feelings about women who raised me. I started with my great grandma Juanita and what I remember about her. She was very elderly and handicapped. I was very young, and this put us in the same boat. While all the other women bustled about the kitchen we were put aside out of the way. We helped by cleaning the rocks out of the beans. Then I painted her daughter my grandma Maria. She passed away when I was eight. I holder her in almost saintly regard because I was so young at that time. The one woman that had the most influence over me was my grandma Margie. As I painted I thought about some of the bad decisions she made. They affected me and my family for many years. This lead me to think about myself. To think about being human and how I have held myself to an impossible standard for years. I realized that this was part of my Hispanic culture. Evelyn P. Steven expressed it best when she wrote that marianismo was “the cult of feminine spiritual superiority, which teaches that women are semidivine, morally superior to and spiritually stronger than men.” It was wonderful to find that somebody wrote about what I have experienced and how detrimental it is to a woman’s mental health.