A Woman’s Touch at Three Masks in Orlando brought together five female artists whose work approached women’s experience through very different media and visual languages.
The exhibition featured Grey Sturgill, LaQwonna “Lady Q” Glaster, Eva Ruiz, Vonnie Benjamin-Brown and Alexia Written.
Five distinct practices
Glaster presented acrylic portraits of women that developed from an earlier abstract practice. Her paintings were closely connected with ideas of healing, resilience and personal transformation.
Sturgill worked with precise freehand line drawing, often using metallic ink on black paper or black ink with selective colour.
Ruiz contributed ceramics and functional pottery, while Written presented abstract work informed by her background in graphic design.
Benjamin-Brown created brightly coloured collages on wood celebrating African-American women, incorporating combs, buttons, spools and other small objects into elaborate representations of hair.
Shared experience without a single definition
The exhibition’s title suggested commonality, but the work resisted the idea that women’s experience could be represented through one style or subject.
Instead, each artist approached identity through her own materials and concerns.
A Woman’s Touch was therefore structured around plurality: portraiture, drawing, ceramics, abstraction and collage occupying the same space while preserving the differences between the artists who made them.