Abigail Taugher

My art brings me comfort in an otherwise confusing world. As a female artist, I am an avid listener of female history to better understand my place in the modern world. Through my research, I have uncovered heroic stories of women who have changed the tides of history from the shadows. All too often, history is told from the perspective of men and tends to leave out the women who also were making just as big of strides in the political and social culture of their respective periods.

Historically painting was a male-dominated field, and textiles were women's work. Here, I want to merge the two and let the mediums inform each other, not compete. In my practice, I aim to elevate the historically under-appreciated sphere of female craft and elevate it to the fine art realm. My current body of work focuses on the representation of female artists and makers throughout history. I utilize elements of fabric and textiles adapted into my own style and form to fit my narrative. Through using acrylic and oils, I am able to create texture and dimensionality by layering patterns in my ever-evolving pieces. I have chosen to paint on a micro-macro scale with little details coming together to create a bigger piece that is more than all its parts. With the zoning, I am tying in a variety of cultures and representations of how women have been free to create. I let the patterns I research guide me as to what the painting needs next and use them as jumping-off points to create my own history from them. Additionally, I paint everything by hand without using stencils or stamps to emphasize that the artwork I am creating is human-made and will contain errors. I find beauty in the fact that for so much of women's history, what we created was made in the home and served a purpose other than beauty or decoration. My art is just as much for the woman who created these fine textiles as those who wore them.

I found great company in the Pattern and Decoration movement of the 1970-80s. In the P&D movement, there was an understanding that art could be, which show a legacy of beauty and unpretentiousness, thus in direct contrast to the macho modernist art scene. The movement falls in line with many subjects that I explore in my artwork through exploring global cultures by way of textiles, architecture, decorative arts, ceramics, and interior designs. Through my research and the significance of the D&P movement, I have been able to cultivate my own visual language that puts craft and fine arts on equal footing. Female history remains my guiding force behind my work, but nonetheless, I also find company in the contemporary sphere. Painting provides order and strength for me that aids in bringing me comfort for this point and time of my artistic practice.