Faith Ringgold

Among the many influential female artists out there, Faith Ringgold caught my eye with her political paintings. The African-American artist from Harlem strived to make art that expressed the experience of women in general, but specifically African-American women. With a B.S. and M.A degree on visual art from the City College of New York, Ringgold created her first political masterpiece in 1963, which happened to be a series, while traveling Europe. 

The American Dream, 1964

This picture above is one of many from that series called The American People. There are many interesting paintings in this series that shows Ringgold's perspective on politics which could be seen on her website, however this one stuck out to me the most because of the title. "The American Dream" is often associated with white people and I believe Ringgold hit her goal with this one with the two skin colors showing that people of color can be living the American Dream as well. 

While some of her art can sometimes be hard to read and interpret, she did not stop at the canvas. Faith Ringgold went on to creating quilts to begin to tell a story. One of her most popular ones, Who's Afraid of Aunt Jemima?, contains pictures as well as a story directly on the quilt itself and Ringgold started using that as another form of expressing herself while creating her own style. 

Who's Afraid of Aunt Jemima? 1983

On top of that, the artist and activist did not seem satisfied and went on to publish children's books that related directly to the quilts she has made. These books, quilts, canvas' all have led her to receive many outstanding awards and be featured around the world successfully being a political influencer through the use of art.