Celebrating women figurative realist painters
Dr. Elaine Melotti Schmidt and Steven Alan Bennett
About the Collectors
Steven Alan Bennett and Dr. Elaine Melotti Schmidt established The Bennett Collection® of Women Realists in 2009. The two collectors limit their collection to figurative realist paintings of women by women artists. The Collection includes work by some of the most exciting women painters currently working: Margaret Bowland, Aleah Chapin, Andrea Kowch, Alyssa Monks, Katie O’Hagan and dozens of others on the cutting edge of figurative realism.
The Bennett Collection® is based on two similar but different beliefs. First, while women painters have produced remarkable work for centuries, they have not received the same degree of acceptance as their male counterparts. This lack of acceptance is demonstrated in a variety of ways---the number of museum exhibitions and solo shows granted to women, the smaller presence of women on visual fine arts faculties, and the lower prices paid to women artists for their work, among others. These actions have impaired the recognition of these painters and their work and tended to discourage them at the earliest and most critical moments of their artistic careers. As Steven says, “The Guerilla Girls are RIGHT!”
Second, in addition to the gender discrimination that has prevailed against women painters, over the course of time, figurative realism has come to be disfavored in many art schools, universities and galleries, disdained by academics and art establishment professionals whose preference for abstract or conceptual work has led them to ignore or repudiate the realistic depiction of persons or figures.
Steven and Elaine have chosen to limit The Bennett Collection® to the work of women figurative realists to celebrate the fabulous work that these women are making as well as to counteract gender discrimination against these fine art painters. It is Steven and Elaine’s hope that their Collection will encourage and enable women painters to pursue figurative realism and likewise encourage others to collect figurative realist work.