Female artistic identity in place: the studio

Abstract In this paper I examine the role of the studio as a central site of artistic identity construction and maintenance. Using ten case studies drawn from interviews with contemporary women visual artists from Toronto, Canada, I argue that women artists value studio space because it powerfully reinforces their sense of commitment and belonging to a predominantly male‐dominated profession. I consider how women cope with the demands of artistic practice when they are unable to establish a spatially separate workspace by addressing the experiences of artists who are parents. I demonstrate how women artists who are primary care‐givers are rarely adequately protected from the interruptions of daily life and have grown accustomed to working in fragments of time and space. While these women may appear willing to concede space to others, when space is crucial to their artistic practice, they have a remarkably strong influence on the form of their creative environment. I maintain, then, that the studio as a fixed physical space continues to be a very real necessity for women artists in all stages of their careers. Keywords: Key words: visual artiststudiospaceidentityCanada Notes Kauffman (Citation1992) reported that some of the women artists in her research sample avoided having an inter view in their studios, and she concluded that this occurred when there was a threat or challenge to the woman's artistic identity. For as Perry discovered in her examination of women artists in the nineteenth‐century Parisian avant‐garde, ‘adequate studio space was essential not only to enable the production of art, but also to establish the professional status of the artist in the public perception’ (Perry Citation1995: 82). Other women artists have also described how they stretched and reversed their work routines to work late into the night. Night working provides long periods of concentration without any interruption or even punctuation. However, having evolved a work pattern that attempts to maximize solitude and isolation, the degree of time and energy invested is not visible to others.