Tessa Lynch / She knows what to do (Wise Women) / Lino print

2021
Lino print on coloured paper (80 gsm)
29.7 x 21 cm
Edition of 20
 
Titled ‘Wise Women’, this series of seven lino prints subverts the image of the witch into that of a wise woman.
 
This body of work evolved as a response to thinking about Silvia Federici’s work on witches as well as Christine de Pizan’s publication ‘The Book of the City of Ladies’. Published in 1405 the work argued against the misogynist male writing of the day by praising significant women and celebrating their capabilities and virtues. The imagery is influenced by medieval illuminations, produced and presented on one flat plain with the storytelling unfolding all at the same time, objects deliberately held on display and becoming symbolic. Lynch makes a point of noticing the faces of women in medieval imagery - a fairly passive, but content look, carried away in contemplation, as if nothing around them can stir them from their inner thoughts. 
 
The works all share in common the depiction of the many roles and responsibilities of women that span domestic and professional spaces, private and personal lives, acted out both consciously and unconsciously - the overarching statement being that women are wise.
 
Produced during lockdown the works were made in the artists home; a kitchen table fashioned into a with clamp presses and prints pegged up to dry on a washing line in between laundry cycles. 
 
Lynch was the Florent Stone printmaking resident between Edinburgh College of Art and Edinburgh Printmakers in 2020. This series of prints were an indirect outcome of this.