The Great Women Artists

• Rose Wylie

  I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is the acclaimed painter, Rose Wylie! Born in 1934, as the youngest of seven children to Victorian parents, Wylie spent her early childhood in India before coming to England aged 5. This was in 1939, in the midst of a bomb-filled Second World War and increasingly fractured world. She went on to study figurative painting, at Folkestone and Dover College of Art in Kent from 1952–56, at a time when tutors would say to her ‘It’s no good bothering with you, you’re a girl, you’ll get married, have children and that’ll be that.’ … It was then to a teacher training programme at Goldsmiths before putting art aside to raise three children. This was, until 1979 when Wylie returned to the studio enrolling at the Royal College of Art, in her early 40s. Her first solo exhibition came a few years later in 1985, but despite Wylie working in her cottage-slash-studio in Kent for the last 50+ years – where we are very excitingly recording today – it was not until the last 10–15 years that her work has been given the attention and acclaim it has always deserved. Playful and fractured, featuring text overlaid with image, witnessing a Rose Wylie painting in person is to see the world in a different way. Wylie takes recognisable elements from pop culture, history, mythology, sport, even the Bible – from flowers, battenberg cakes, sportstars, queens, to the likes of Nicole Kidman and Emily Maitlis – and shows us them anew, in her paintings that are void of perspective to the point that there is no indication of where the work starts or ends. Her paintings are sometimes full of movement – like a football being kicked, almost balletically, with players, clad in yellow, darting across the dotty canvas that surrounds its viewer. At other times they remind me of a film playing out – like the blood-clad figure lying on the floor in Kill Bill – or even a script with stage directions featuring phrases like “getting dark” or “yellow” … Wylie’s paintings are full of decisions, ideas, and the more I look at them, the more her world opens up… Now 90 years old, after a celebrity-filled birthday bash, Wylie is back better than ever for her exhibition at David Zwirner London “When Found becomes Given”, opening on April 3rd, and I couldn’t be more delighted to be speaking to her at her Kent-based studio today. Exhibition: https://www.davidzwirner.com/exhibitions/2025/rose-wylie-when-found-becomes-given -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.famm.com/en/ https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

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• Jenny Saville

  I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is one of the most renowned painters working in the world right now: Jenny Saville. Hailed for her at times colossal paintings of the human form – from close ups of the face, to examinations of exposed flesh – Saville is fascinated with the complex vessels that we all live inside. Theatrical and grotesque, beautiful and painful, her presentations of the body can feel almost like a landscape, pressed up against the surface of the canvas, in her masterful handling of paint that ranges from wet, to dry, oily to thin, thick and with shards and smears of colour. At once uneasy, raw, tense, and animal-like, Saville’s portrayals of the body show how it transforms, grows, decays, and breathes… While full of contradictions, there is always a beauty, from the colours Saville uses to the golden light and textures that accentuate a knee, or finger. Born in Cambridge in 1970, as one of four siblings, Saville studied at the Glasgow School of Art in the 80s and 90s, and spent her final year in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she was exposed to a new set of American artists and feminist thought. In the 1990s, Saville quickly became one of the most anticipated painters challenging not just the medium of paint, or the depiction of the body, but reinventing the female nude or semi-nude body as a subject that has been entrenched in a male-gazed art history. Tackling Biblical and mythological narratives, referencing ancient Venus-like figures, as well as her own experience as a mother, Saville has constantly configured new ways of presenting the body, and in more recent years, has turned to stark, saturated colouring This year, she will open exhibitions at the Albertina, Vienna, her first major solo show in Austria; Anatomy of Painting at the National Portrait Gallery, London – that will bring together 50 works – and will travel to the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, for us to see the incredible trajectory of an artist who keeps reinventing flesh with paint – and I can’t wait to find out more… LINKS! Albertina: https://www.albertina.at/en/exhibitions/jenny-saville/ NPG: https://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/exhibitions/2025/jenny-saville/?_gl=1*136gpph*_up*MQ..*_gs*MQ..&gclid=Cj0KCQjwv_m-BhC4ARIsAIqNeBt-ZzQivw0289iG5mzsW59uEmn-IUiod6qXx6jVk9rOLTLV9trgo20aAiw7EALw_wcB -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.famm.com/en/ https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

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• Sheila Heti on Jenny Holzer, Berthe Morisot, Margaux Williamson, and more

  Welcome to the FINALE of Season 12! I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is the acclaimed writer, Sheila Heti. Born in 1976 in Toronto, where she lives today, Heti is the author of eleven books, from novels to novellas, short stories and children’s books. Most recently, her acclaimed books have included Alphabetical Diaries, that ordered a decade worth of diaries in alphabetical order; Pure Colour (2022), a novel that explores grief, art and time; Motherhood (2018), a meditation on whether or not to become a mother in a society that judges you whatever the outcome. Heti’s writing is some of the most honest, thoughtful I’ve ever read, and throughout weaves in the broad subject of art, whether it be paintings or her protagonists’ professions… Heti also wrote for the literary journal the Believer, and has conducted many long-form print interviews with writers and artists, including conversations with Joan Didion, Elena Ferrante, Agnes Varda, Sophie Calle, who are among some of the artists we are going to be, very excitingly, discussing today. -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.famm.com/en/ https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

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• Barbara Walker

  I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast today is the renowned British artist, Barbara Walker. Born in Birmingham, where she lives and works today, Walker is hailed for her intimate paintings of everyday life, and intricate drawings that not only show power dynamics in Old Master Paintings, but give voice to histories that are all too often erased. From works on paper to paintings on canvas, and large-scale charcoal wall drawings, Walker’s work, no matter their scale, is full of empathy, depth, and emotion. Some tell us stories about the state of affairs in Britain, whereas others are much more personal – in the early 2000s, she made her son the subject of her work – which get to the heart of the brokenness in our society, and look at situations from both an artistic and motherly gaze. Research is at the heart of Walker’s work, and she frequently goes into public archives, such as for her incredible series, Shock and Awe, which highlighted the contribution of Caribbean servicemen and women serving in the British Army from 1914 to the present day. As well as “Vanishing Point”, which so movingly – and powerfully – explores the visibility and invisibility of Black subjects in Western European collections in our museum collections. Drawing in the Black figures while obscuring the dominant white subjects, Walker encourages the viewer to consider other perspectives beyond the ones that have become the so-called ‘default’ in these institutions. But she is also interested in the unknown – as she says: As she says, “I'll go into archives looking for the backstories behind events, individuals or paintings, but I never know what I'm going to find. Making art is about curiosity and it's the same in the archive – I love playing in the unknown.” Very excitingly, a major survey of her work is currently on view at the Whitworth Museum in Manchester, in including her Turner Prize nominated group of portraits, Burden of Proof, a poignant response to the Windrush Scandal – and a newly commissioned printed wallpaper inspired by the Whitworth’s collection, that continues her representation of the Windrush generation. -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.famm.com/en/ https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

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• Shahzia Sikander

  I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is one of the world’s most renowned artists, Shahzia Sikander. Working across painting, sculpture, drawing, and animation, the Lahore-born, New York-based Sikander is widely celebrated for her work that subverts tradition and reclaims narratives – such as her subverting of Central and South-Asian manuscript painting and launching the form known today as neo-miniature. A holder of a B.F.A. in 1991 from the National College of Arts (NCA) in Lahore, it was Sikander’s breakthrough work, The Scroll, 1989–90, that received national critical acclaim in Pakistan and brought international recognition to the medium in contemporary art practices in the 1990s. Life then took her to the US, where she received, in 1995, her M.F.A. at the Rhode Island School of Design. Over the subsequent twenty plus years, Sikander’s practice – which has expanded into multiple mediums – has been pivotal in showcasing art of the South Asian diaspora as a contemporary American tradition. Solo exhibitions include at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in Texas; the Morgan Library and Museum in New York; accolades include the Pollock Prize for Creativity, a medal of Art by the U.S. Department of State, and a MacArthur Fellowship; she is in the collections of all major national and international museums, and she is currently an adjunct professor for Fall of 2024 at Columbia University, Sikander's major outdoor project, NOW, an 8-foot bronze female sculpture, is permanently installed on the roof of the Appellate Courthouse in Manhattan. An accompanying 18-foot female sculpture, Witness, was exhibited in Madison Square Park in 2023, which then travelled to Houston – something we will get into later on in this episode. Her interdisciplinary practice, that has focussed on hybridised female figures that references goddesses from all different global perspectives, offers a perspective that breaks down all borders, disrupts assumptions around art historical boundaries. It is groundbreaking, trailblazing – and I can’t wait to find out more. -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.famm.com/en/ https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

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