Cafe Noir 🧡🦋🧡
LightNews LightNews
banner
starbucksdiva.bsky.social
Cafe Noir 🧡🦋🧡
@starbucksdiva.bsky.social
29 followers 19 following 0 posts
Just a bookish Mom who loves her kid, coffee,art and reading. In my spare time, I encourage folks to study for their Calculus lll and Thermodynamics exams.

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Cafe Noir 🧡🦋🧡
mdstamper.bsky.social
“Untitled: Portrait of a Black Woman” by Thomas C. Campbell (English-American) - Oil on canvas / c. 1900–1914 - Tennessee State Museum (Nashville, Tennessee) #WomenInArt #ThomasCCampbell #ThomasCampbell #TennesseeStateMuseum #artText #art #BlueskyArt #portraitofawoman #BlackWomenInArt #AmericanArt
A close, three-quarter portrait shows an unidentified Black woman seated against a soft, olive-brown background. Her skin is painted in warm, deep tones with gentle highlights along the cheeks and nose. She turns slightly toward us while looking outward with a steady, thoughtful gaze and eyes wide, lids relaxed, mouth closed, plus a calm, but guarded expression. Her hair is arranged in short, natural puffs and curls, and a white headscarf with red striping drapes from the crown behind. She wears a green dress with a crisp white collar and a small pink bow. The curved back of a red chair frames her shoulder. Brushwork is soft and blended in the face though looser in the clothing and background to keep our attention on her presence. Painted sometime between 1900 and 1914, this work stands out within English-born American artist Thomas C. Campbell’s practice, which is better known for pastoral and Smoky Mountains landscapes. The sitter’s name is not recorded, but the portrait’s quiet directness reads as an insistence on personhood for an individual rendered with care. Exhibited as part of the Tennessee State Museum’s conversation about the region’s early-1900s “progress” (economic growth, industrial development, civic pride, and cultural expansion) narratives, her composed stillness becomes a counter-image to the era’s louder public story including Knoxville’s boosterism alongside the realities of Jim Crow, the Great Migration, and the racial violence that erupted locally in 1919. Campbell was active in East Tennessee and helped elevate the Knoxville art scene. He later led the art program at Maryville College. Here, he brings an academic, portrait-minded attention. The restrained palette, close cropping, and unwavering eye contact make the painting feel less like a document of fashion or place and more like an encounter with a dignified, unsentimental record of someone who lived, and was seen, within that racially-charged historical Tennessee landscape.
February 14, 2026 at 3:08 AM
Reposted by Cafe Noir 🧡🦋🧡
mdstamper.bsky.social
“Portrait of Grace Hill Walker” by D. (Daniel) Norman Tillman (American) - Oil on canvas / c. 1925–1935 - The Butler Institute of American Art (Youngstown, Ohio) #WomenInArt #DanielNormanTillman #NormanTillman #Tillman #ButlerInstituteOfAmericanArt #BlackArt #artText #BlackArtist #PortraitofaWoman
Painted by D. Norman Tillman (Daniel Norman Tillman), an African American portraitist active in Ohio who exhibited locally and studied at major art schools, this work is both likeness and tribute. The sitter, Grace Hill Walker, was later a founder of the Youngstown (Ohio) Chapter of The Links, Incorporated (an African American women’s volunteer service organization) serving as its first president when the chapter was organized and chartered in 1955. Her leadership centered on civic, educational, and cultural service. In that light, her direct gaze and calm hands can be seen as visual rhetoric including steadiness, capability, and social presence, rendered without spectacle. She is depicted as a young Black woman sitting in profile to our right, but turned slightly to look directly toward us with a steady, thoughtful gaze. Her skin is a warm medium-brown tone, softly modeled with thin, luminous paint. She wears her dark hair in a short, waved bob that frames her face and ears. A long-sleeved dress in muted plum-brown wraps her torso and arms. A loose white tie falls down the center of her chest, and a long, delicate necklace loops down and back up, catching small points of light. Her hands rest together in her lap with fingers overlapping to suggest composure and self-possession rather than stiffness. The background is spare and atmospheric with a hazy field of browns, olives, and smoky violets, with brushy arcs that feel like remembered movement. Tillman’s handling stays intimate as edges dissolve into the backdrop, while the face, eyes, and hands remain the clearest anchors, inviting a quiet, person-to-person encounter. Shown in the Butler’s exhibition highlighting African American artists, the portrait functions as community memory that keeps local leadership visible, dignified, and enduring. The restrained palette and softened setting give her room to “hold” the picture with her expression alone, suggesting a life defined not by props, but by purpose.
February 15, 2026 at 4:30 AM
Reposted by Cafe Noir 🧡🦋🧡
jasmineforus.bsky.social
This is who Michelle Obama is to me - a woman who instinctively knows when a hug & encouragement is needed. I refuse to repost the midnight madman’s racist rant. I choose to do what she did for me on this day - to center her, her compassion and love for others, her beauty and grace.
February 6, 2026 at 9:31 PM
Reposted by Cafe Noir 🧡🦋🧡
mdstamper.bsky.social
“Bathed Again by Southern Suns” by Chase Williamson (American) - Oil, glitter, and fabric on canvas / c. 2023-2025 - African American Museum of Dallas (Texas) #WomenInArt #WomenArtists #WomensArt #WomanArtist #ChaseWilliamson #artText #art #arte #BlackArt #AAMDallas #AfricanAmericanMuseumofDallas
A close-up, sunlit portrait shows a Black woman from the chest up beneath a canopy of green leaves set against a vivid, open blue sky. She has deep brown skin and long, center-parted black braids that cascade in thick ropes and softer curls over her shoulders and chest. Her eyes lower gently, focused downward while her expression feels quiet, reflective, and private. Warm orange-gold light floods her forehead, cheekbones, and nose, as if late-afternoon sun is pouring through leaves, creating a radiant glow on her face and a vertical flare of light at the center of her chest. She wears a rich green top, and a pale, textured wrap drapes loosely off her shoulders. Glitter specks are catch light like heat shimmer, pollen, or fine spray in summer air. The mixed materials make the scene feel tactile so light doesn’t just illuminate, but lands, clings, and sparkles. Chase Williamson is a Knoxville-based painter and MFA candidate at the University of Tennessee, whose work centers Black womanhood and marginalized identity through paint and fabric, shaped by her Middle Tennessee upbringing. Around the time this work entered the 28th Biennial Carroll Harris Simms National Black Art Exhibition, she was building national visibility through juried museum and regional exhibitions while also deepening her professional footprint through curatorial and residency experiences. “Bathed Again by Southern Suns” reads as both portrait and offering with “southern suns” naming a specific regional light (and a history) while “bathed again” suggests renewal, return, and self-reclamation. The glitter and fabric don’t merely decorate. They materialize atmosphere and memory, turning radiance into substance. Her downward gaze becomes a boundary as much as a mood and a choice to be seen on her own terms. Within Black expression and identity, the painting’s impact is its insistence on softness as strength and Black womanhood rendered luminous, grounded in place, and held with care.
February 7, 2026 at 3:51 AM
Reposted by Cafe Noir 🧡🦋🧡
brandon-beaber.bsky.social
Patterns of oligoclonal IgG bands in the cerebrospinal fluid and serum. Type II (OCBs in the CSF but not serum) and type III (OCBs in the CSF and serum, but some OCBs in the CSF not present in the serum) are associated with multiple sclerosis pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...
February 8, 2026 at 4:16 AM
Reposted by Cafe Noir 🧡🦋🧡
mdstamper.bsky.social
“Portrait de fillette” (Portrait of a Little Girl) by Henry d’Estienne (French) - Oil on canvas / c 1913 - Musée d’Orsay (Paris, France) #WomenInArt #MuseeOrsay #HenrydEstienne #dEstienne #art #artText #PortraitofaGitl #FrenchArt #FrenchArtist #arte #artfrançais #artistefrançais #Muséed’Orsay #1910s
The museum (Musée d’Orsay) also records the work under the alternate title “Mademoiselle S…,” hinting at a private identity held just out of reach so this portrait is both revelation and discretion. Painted around 1913 and acquired from the artist that same year, the image balances a polished, Salon-ready finish with an intimate tenderness via a careful costume and composed stance that suggests social training, while a half-smile and forward-falling braids keep her unmistakably childlike. A girl with fair skin stands in a quiet interior, turned three-quarters toward us with an easy, self-possessed posture. Her long brown hair is parted and braided into two thick plaits that fall past her waist, emphasizing both youth and careful grooming. She wears a vivid red dress with black trim around short sleeves, the dress yoke, and a wide hem. Its fabric is softly pleated and painted with delicate vertical strokes that suggest weight and movement. A large, cream-colored hat with a floral crown and deep navy decorations frames her face. Its brim casts a gentle shadow over her forehead while leaving her bright eyes and small, knowing smile clearly visible. Her right hand rests lightly on the top rail of a dark wooden chair with turned spindles and a worn, olive-toned seat. Her touch is casual, as if she has just paused mid-step. Black socks and polished black shoes anchor her on a pale floor with hints of color. Behind her, greenish wallpaper and parts of two framed paintings create a muted, domestic backdrop, letting the warm red dress and her calm gaze hold the center. French artist Henry d’Estienne was academically trained in Paris and known as a portraitist often linked to Orientalist circles. He brings a classical steadiness to the girl’s presence, yet the emotional temperature stays warm, familial, and immediate. Seen on the eve of World War I, her bright red dress feels like a moment of girlhood held still before history accelerates.
February 7, 2026 at 9:54 PM
Reposted by Cafe Noir 🧡🦋🧡
mdstamper.bsky.social
“Mary Jane” by Noah Davis (American) - Oil and acrylic on canvas / 2008 - Philadelphia Museum of Art (Pennsylvania) #WomenInArt #PhiladelphiaMuseumOfArt #NoahDavis
#FigurativePainting #AmericanArt #art #artText #BlueskyArt #PortraitofaGirl #AmericanArt #MaryJane #AfricanAmericanArtist #BlackArt
The title “Mary Jane” carries a double meaning like a person’s name, but also the classic strap shoes that signal childhood and “proper” presentation. American artist Noah Davis gives that presentation dignity without sentimentality depicting a young Black girl standing with clasped hands and steady look directly at us. Behind her, a dense, mottled backdrop of pale greens and blacks like camouflage could mean both protection and threat at once: a world that can swallow you up, and a pattern you learn to navigate. She has deep brown skin and a calm, direct gaze. A white headscarf frames her face. She wears a white collared blouse under a light-blue vest, and a striped tan-and-white pinafore or apron over a pale-blue skirt. Her hands are clasped neatly at her waist. White knee socks with a couple faint stripes rise above black Mary Jane shoes. A dark horizontal band of floor at the bottom, grounds her small figure in a quiet, contained space. In 2008, Davis was deepening a practice that treated everyday Black life as worthy of the grand scale of painting and linking the intimate to the historical. His belief that art should be for everyone later shaped the Underground Museum (cofounded with Karon Davis). For the Philadelphia presentation of his retrospective, curator Eleanor Nairne said, “On every encounter, I am struck again by the potency of Noah Davis’s work.” The potency here is almost quiet, as we take in a child seen clearly, held at the center, and refusing to be blurred into the background.
February 8, 2026 at 6:37 AM
Reposted by Cafe Noir 🧡🦋🧡
mdstamper.bsky.social
“She Who Knows” by Ayana Ross (American) - Oil on canvas / 2022 - Muskegon Museum of Art (Muskegon, Michigan) #WomenInArt #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #AyanaRoss #MuskegonMuseumofArt #BlackArt #art #artText #BlackArtist #AfricanAmericanArtist #AfricanAmericanArt #BlueskyArt #PortraitofaGirl
This full-length portrait by American artist Ayana Ross depicts a young Black girl standing against an off white background that becomes a multi-shade green checkerboard band, like a tiled floor. She has deep brown skin and a soft, rounded face, her natural hair forming a short, airy halo. She wears a crisp white, short-sleeved dress that flares gently at the hem, with white socks and black shoes. Her posture is steady and self-possessed with shoulders relaxed and steady gaze direct but calm. At her side she holds a bright red book with saturated color. Ross renders skin, fabric, and light with careful realism, letting the pared-down setting keep attention on the girl’s presence, dignity, and quiet authority. The palette stays restrained with creamy whites, muted greens, and a gentle shadow so that every decision reads intentional including the clean edge of the dress and the careful modeling of her legs. The simplicity also amplifies the ethical stakes of portraiture so we are asked to slow down, notice the child’s agency, and question any urge to project a story onto her. Based in Atlanta and recipient of the 2021 Bennett Prize, Ross uses realism as a platform for examining race, gender, identity, economics, and the value systems that decide who is believed. The title, “She Who Knows,” likely turns the portrait into a statement about authority because knowledge here is carried, guarded, and chosen. The red book, as the sharpest, most insistent color in the painting, probably signals learning as something precious and hard-won, not passively received. It invokes histories of restricted access to education, but the book also insists on the sitter’s agency. Her calm, unwavering gaze completes the message: she isn’t staged as “innocent” for our comfort. She stands as someone already aware, already informed, and already centered.
February 7, 2026 at 6:49 PM
Reposted by Cafe Noir 🧡🦋🧡
mdstamper.bsky.social
“Seated Woman” by Charles Bohannah (American) - Oil on canvas / c. 1940 - Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art (San Francisco, California) #WomenInArt #HolmesArtGallery #MelvinHolmesCollection #CharlesBohannah #Bohannah #AfricanAmericanArt #BlueskyArt #artText #BlackArt #art #AmericanArt
Made by American artist Charles Bohannah around 1940, “Seated Woman” sits near a pivotal threshold in Bohannah’s life as a Brooklyn-born artist trained through institutions like Cooper Union and the Art Students League. Around the beginning of World War II, he pursued technical training to support the war effort, then turned increasingly to photography during the war years, before returning to oil painting afterward. That layered skillset helps explain this portrait’s balance between softness and structure so it feels more observed than staged. It’s an intimate vertical portrait of a woman with deep brown skin and a full natural afro. She sits cross-legged on a wooden chair, one arm draped over the back, wearing a white button-down blouse and dark skirt with black heels. It’s a quiet, self-possessed pose that reads as both restful and watchful. Her calm gaze meets us against a warm reddish-brown background as soft light models her face and legs. The composition is close, direct, and less about surroundings than about presence so our attention stays with her posture, the angle of her head, and the calm, steady way she occupies the narrow canvas. Bohannah’s paint handling emphasizes form over spectacle with broad, confident passages to establish the figure, while smaller, more deliberate transitions describe facial structure and the contours of the hands and clothing. The sitter is presented as a complete person rather than a type. It is noted that the back of the painting bears the artist’s business card with a Brooklyn address. The card adds a grounding detail that this portrait is not only an image of a beautiful woman, but also evidence of an artist building a working life, advertising his practice, and insisting on professional visibility. In that light, the woman’s composed stillness becomes the painting’s argument that presence is power, and being seen on one’s own terms is a form of authorship.
February 5, 2026 at 3:09 PM
Reposted by Cafe Noir 🧡🦋🧡
mdstamper.bsky.social
"RAE" by Cecilia Lamptey-Botchway (Ghanaian–Nigerian) - Oil, acrylic, & mopping wool fiber on canvas / c. 2021 - Nubuke Foundation (Accra, Ghana) #WomenInArt #CeciliaLampteyBotchway #LampteyBotchway #WomenArtists #BlackArt #NubukeFoundation #PortraitofaWoman #artText #IssaRae #WomensArt #WomanArtist
Titled “RAE,” the portrait references Black actress and creator Jo-Issa Rae Diop (Issa Rae), whose work foregrounds women’s equality and Black women’s interior lives. Ghanaian–Nigerian artist Lamptey-Botchway writes, “Some images always invite the observer for a conversation,” and that invitation lives in Rae’s direct gaze and unforced ease. She sits facing us with a comfortable, self-possessed calm. Her deep brown skin is modeled with soft highlights along the forehead, cheeks, and nose. Rae wears large silver hoop earrings and a hint of glossy coral-red lipstick. Her eyes meet ours directly, steady and alert. Her hair is pulled back into a textured puff, revealing her ears and the long line of her neck. She lounges in a dark chair, one arm draped over the backrest and the other hand resting across her lap with fingers relaxed. Her outfit is a vivid cobalt-blue suit with pale gray panels, stitched in thick, looping lines like corded embroidery. Beneath it, a cream top is built from dense, tactile ridges. The raised mopping-wool fibers create a topography across sleeves, lapels, and cuffs. Behind her, a hot pink field is patterned with faint grids and geometric motifs reminiscent of stamped textiles. The repetition almost frames her like a halo of design. At the right edge, a small round table with pink top and pale green base adds a domestic note, while the palette keeps the sitter luminous against the patterned pink backdrop. Oil and acrylic establish the glow of skin and the heat of pink, while mopping wool fiber turns the suit into raised, touchable relief. The artist, a 2015 graduate of the Yaba College of Technology’s School of Art, Design, and Textiles, often draws on cloth-stamping and batik traditions. By weaving a material associated with cleaning into a portrait of celebrity, she makes care-labor visible, insisting that glamour and work belong to the same story. Geometry and repetition hold her presence steady, like a rhythm you can feel with your eyes.
January 21, 2026 at 11:53 PM
Reposted by Cafe Noir 🧡🦋🧡
mdstamper.bsky.social
“The Lawd Is My Shepard” by Osmond Watson (Jamaican) - Oil on canvas / 1969 - National Gallery of Jamaica (Kingston) #WomenInArt #OsmondWatson #NationalGalleryofJamaica #JamaicanArt #CaribbeanArt #PortraitPainting #BlackArt #art #artText #BlueskyArt #PortraitofaWoman #JamaicanArtist #CaribbeanArtist
Artist Osmond Watson titles the work in Jamaican Creole, turning “Psalm 23” from the Christian bible into everyday speech and locating faith in the lived world of a market. He monumentalizes a working Black Jamaican woman whose spiritual practice sits alongside economic self-reliance with produce for sale below, and holy scripture at the center. The woman sits looking slightly to our right with calm steadiness. She wears a pale blue headwrap that catches the light, a short-sleeved checkerboard blouse in warm reds and golds, and a blue skirt that folds in soft, heavy arcs across her bare knees. Her hands clasp an opened brown “HOLY BIBLE” book in her lap. She sits inside a market stall improvised from boards, nails, and sheet metal as angled wood planks hold up a tarp above her, a wooden barrel curves at left, and a patterned blue metal panel frames the right edge like a patched wall. At her feet, ripe round, orange-red and golden fruit spills forward, while a basket of red beans and a metal cup sits at the lower right. The space feels intimate and guarded as dark corners press in, yet the woman’s presence holds the scene, as if prayer and work share the same seat. Her skin is rendered in deep, glossy browns with cool green shadows, outlined with decisive dark contours that sharpen cheekbones, eyelids, and her nose. Two silver bangles circle one wrist and a ring glints on a finger. Her mouth is closed, neither smiling nor stern, more like someone looking up while reading. The geometry of the stall and the careful stillness of her pose make the Bible feel like the painting’s quiet compass. Painted in early post-independence 1969, it affirms Black Jamaican dignity being direct, unsentimental, and public. The cubism-touched geometry, saturated color, and heavy outlines lend a stained-glass intensity, elevating everyday items and daily labor into icon. As critic David Boxer put it, Watson wanted art that could be “understood and appreciated by all levels of society.”
January 19, 2026 at 8:17 PM
Reposted by Cafe Noir 🧡🦋🧡
mdstamper.bsky.social
"Niña con Lazo de Lana rosado (Girl with Pink Wool Bow)" by June Beer (Nicaraguan) - Oil on canvas / 1983 - X Bienal de Nicaragua, Palacio Nacional de Cultura (Managua) #WomenInArt #JuneBeer #Beer #PalacioNacionalDeCultura #arte #artText #PortraitofaGirl #WomensArt #WomenArtists #WomenPaintingWomen
Painted in 1983, this portrait shows Nicaraguan artist June Beer’s hallmark directness with a frontal pose that refuses to make the unidentified sitter decorative. A Black girl is shown from the chest up, centered and facing us directly. Her skin is painted in deep brown and warm olive tones, with soft shading along the cheeks, nose, and neck. She has large, brown almond eyes with dark lids and fine lashes. Her gaze is steady and quiet, neither smiling nor frowning. Her brows are lightly arched, and her mouth is closed in a calm, neutral line. Her hair is gathered into a smooth, rounded updo that fills much of the upper canvas and is parted by a thin line just off-center. On either side of her head, two oversized bows sit behind her ears: pale pink with brighter magenta folds and textured like wool or felt. She wears a light yellow dress with a wide, scalloped collar that curves over her shoulders and chest. Down the center runs a dotted turquoise pattern, and the bodice is sprinkled with tiny turquoise marks, like embroidery or beading. The background is a clean gradient of teal to cobalt blue, making her silhouette and the bows glow. The figure is outlined with dark contours, giving the portrait a poster-like clarity, and the paint surface shows gentle speckling and grain that suggests age. The girl’s composure is quiet, but unyielding self-possession. The pink bows and cool sea-blues recall the Caribbean coast world Beer knew in the port city of Bluefields, Nicaragua, while the turquoise “stitch” down the dress hints at care, craft, and the dignity of everyday making. In the early revolutionary era, Beer, a self-taught painter and poet, used portraiture to center Black Caribbean communities and women. Shown posthumously in Homenaje a June Beer at the X Bienal de Nicaragua (Palacio Nacional de Cultura, Managua), this work is now in the Miguel D’Escoto collection.
January 12, 2026 at 11:37 PM
Reposted by Cafe Noir 🧡🦋🧡
mdstamper.bsky.social
“Etta Moten Barnett Dancing” by Jay Jackson (American) - Watercolor, ink, and charcoal on paper / c. 1940 - Delaware Art Museum (Wilmington) #WomenInArt #JayPaulJackson #DelawareArtMuseum #EttaMoten #EttaMotenBarnett #DanceArt #BlackHistory #art #artText #BlueskyArt #AmericanArtist #AmericanArt
Made for the 1940 “American Negro Exposition,” this image honors Etta Moten Barnett, a pioneering performer who “broke barriers” in American big-budget movies such as “Flying Down to Rio” and “Gold Diggers” as well as on the concert and theater stage. She became widely celebrated for her work in George Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess,” and later for civic leadership and philanthropy. At the time, mainstream films refused to present Black women with glamour or complexity, but American artist Jay Jackson turns a spotlight into a declaration that Moten is a centered, stylish, and unmissable star. Cameras in the corners asks us to consider how Black brilliance was documented, consumed, and often edited into someone else’s story. It’s a stage scene in watercolor and ink showing the glamorous Black woman dancer with warm brown skin mid-dance under a bright oval spotlight. She leans forward with one arm extended, her torso twisting and her knees flexed in a poised, athletic stance. Her hair is styled in a short, dark bob with a deep teal headpiece. Her lips are painted a vivid red. A pale green, high-waisted skirt swirls around her hips, paired with a matching bra-top and green heels. Behind her, a dark, smoky background is washed in bluish grays and mossy greens, making the spotlight feel theatrical. At the lower left, a sketched cameraman appears as a loose charcoal outline aimed toward her, while at the upper right is a second camera that frames her as both performer and filmed icon. Jackson’s lines alternate between crisp contour and airy washes, letting movement read as vibration rather than blur. Jackson, whose drawings circulated in the Chicago Defender and who later created his own feature syndicate for the “Home Folks” cartoon, uses the visual language of modern media to insist on dignity. In the sweep of green fabric and the dancer’s forward reach, the work presents choreography of agency for a body in motion claiming space, light, and narrative on her own terms.
January 10, 2026 at 10:41 PM
Reposted by Cafe Noir 🧡🦋🧡
mdstamper.bsky.social
“April” by Elise Kendrick (American) - Mixed media / 2021 - Frist Art Museum (Nashville, Tennessee) #WomenInArt #EliseKendrick #Kendrick #MixedMedia #artText #BlueskyArt #AfricanAmericanArt #BlackWomen #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #BlackArtist #BlackArt #FristArtMuseum #WomenPaintingWomen
The title "April" depicts a person described by the American artist Elise Kendrick as a content creator, former podcaster, and bassist to place a specific person inside a painting that, at first glance, seems like only a universal icon of beauty and rest. Created during the pandemic as Kendrick began her “The Aunties” series, the portrait carries the feeling of finding community through screens with a face held close and a private breath made public. The close-up portrait shows a Black woman with medium-brown skin and a full, natural dark afro that fans outward like a halo. Her brows are thick and arched. Her eyes are closed, chin lifted, and deep plum lips part slightly to reveal white teeth, suggesting a moment of release. Kendrick renders her face and neck in radiant bands of orange, gold, green, and violet, with crisp highlights along the cheekbones and nose and cool shadows along the neck. She wears a plain white t-shirt. Behind her, a patterned field repeats jars labeled “Black Magic” in layered blues and purples, like wallpaper, with scratchy, hand-drawn lines. The repeated “Black Magic” jars fold the Black salon into the picture plane. They nod to the alchemy of modern haircare including oils, gels, edge control, and curl creams and likely to a reclaimed language of power, where “magic” names skill, inheritance, and self-definition rather than stereotype. April’s lifted head and closed eyes become an insistence on softness without apology to take up space, be seen, and choose ease. Shown in the Frist Art Museum’s micro-exhibition "Elise Kendrick: Salon Noir," Kendrick’s bright palette and graphic patterning extend her Nashville-based practice of honoring women of color and the cultural meanings carried in hairstyle, texture, and routine. The highlights and the repeating, label-like jars feel like they might be visual shorthand for the salon as both workplace and sanctuary, and for Black hair as culture, craft, and pride.
January 5, 2026 at 7:30 PM
Reposted by Cafe Noir 🧡🦋🧡
mdstamper.bsky.social
“Carry This In Remembrance Of Me” by Delita Martin (American) - Acrylic, charcoal, lithography, relief printing, decorative papers, & hand stitching / 2019 - Muscarelle Museum of Art (Williamsburg, Virginia) #WomenInArt #DelitaMartin #Muscarelle #WomensArt #WomenArtists #artText #WomenPaintingWomen
A young Black woman with dark black skin stands in three-quarter view, her shoulders angled left while her head turns back toward us. Her expression is serious and self-possessed with lips set and eyes steady. Short, tightly curled hair frames her face, punctuated by three rosette-like circles along the hairline. A veil of translucent turquoise dots washes over her forehead, cheeks, and neck, continuing down her torso. Some circles are crisp, others faint, as if the pattern is drifting. Behind her, the background becomes a dense constellation of circles in many sizes, so her body feels both separate from and woven into the field. She wears a strapless, pale dress tinted with icy blue, patterned with hand-drawn lavender rings and spirals like water on water. At her neck sits an expansive, dark collar that spreads across the shoulders like lace or leaves, its edges visibly hand-stitched. Nestled in the collar are circular medallions of layered paper and fabric with faint handwriting and numbers appear on them, including the plainly legible words “sold to.” The title echoes the religious phrase “do this in remembrance of me,” but Martin’s shift to carry turns remembrance into a burden and a duty. Made in the context of Muscarelle’s “1619/2019” exhibition on slavery and forced migration, this portrait treats memory as something living … and unfinished. The necklace’s “sold to” and ledger-like numerals evoke bills of sale and the paperwork of slavery, making the language of ownership impossible to overlook. By cutting, layering, and stitching those fragments into adornment, Martin re-authors the archive so what was once evidence of commodification becomes mourning and resistance. The cool blues and repeating circles (often linked in her practice to spirit space and feminine power) are veil and shield like an ancestral presence that protects the sitter’s interior life. Her unwavering gaze insists on presence over possession, asking us to remember with accountability.
January 2, 2026 at 7:14 AM
Reposted by Cafe Noir 🧡🦋🧡
mdstamper.bsky.social
“A Girl in Red (Portrait of Gladys Ankora)” by Grace Salome Kwami (Ghanaian) - Oil on linen on canvas / 1954 - The Phillips Collection (Washington, DC) #WomenInArt #WomensArt #WomenArtists #GraceSalomeKwami #Kwami #art #PhillipsCollection #artText #GhanaianArt #GhanaianArtist #WomenPaintingWomen
Painted around 1954, on the cusp of Ghana’s independence era, this portrait treats an everyday working woman as a bearer of modern life. Gladys Ankora worked in artist Grace Salome Kwami’s family household in Achimota, and that proximity is felt via close cropping and an unshowy pose. Ankora faces forward against a muted olive-green ground. She is a young Ghanaian woman with deep brown skin, softly modeled cheeks, and a steady, direct gaze. Her dark hair is wrapped in a rose-red headscarf that frames her forehead and falls over one shoulder. A small gold, diamond-shaped earring catches the light, and a thin necklace rests at the base of her neck. She wears a vivid red and pink dress with a wide boat neckline. The fabric is patterned with pale starbursts that repeat across the bodice and wide collar. Kwami’s warm reds and browns are balanced by subtle highlights on the bridge of the nose, lips, and collarbone, giving the face sculptural presence. The sitter’s shoulders are squared and calm, her mouth gently closed, her expression composed. Paint remains slightly matte and textured, and the close cropping brings her near so cloth, skin, and light read as equally important markers of personhood. The background is brushed in thin layers of green and tan, like worn plaster, keeping attention on her face. Her chin lifts slightly, suggesting quiet resolve rather than performance. The starburst motifs echo across the neckline and bodice, creating a gentle rhythm that contrasts with the Ankora’s stillness. Kwami, known as “Da Grace,” trained at Achimota’s School of Art and Craft and persevered in a field shaped by gender bias, developing her own realism when modern African art histories were scarcely taught. By lingering on cloth, pattern, and gold, she links personal style to cultural identity, while Ankora’s presence refuses an exoticizing gaze. Gladys Ankora is presented as a specific person, dignified and self-possessed.
December 30, 2025 at 9:22 PM
Reposted by Cafe Noir 🧡🦋🧡
mdstamper.bsky.social
“Ung kikuyu-pige (Portrait of a Young Kikuyu Girl)” by Karen Blixen (Danish) - Oil on canvas / 1924 - Karen Blixen Museet (Rungsted, Denmark) #WomenInArt #KarenBlixen #Blixen #KarenBlixenMuseet #Kikuyu #IsakDinesen #WomensArt #DanishArtist #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #art #artText #WomenPaintingWomen
The Danish title “Ung kikuyu-pige” is often translated as “Portrait of a Young Kikuyu Girl.” Museum notes describes the sitter as renowned for her beauty and she reportedly married with a high bride dowry, but her personal name is not recorded, a reminder of how easily a life can be reduced to type. Blixen painted the work during her Kenya years, later revisited in her 1937 memoir “Den afrikanske farm (Out of Africa).” A young Kikuyu girl is painted from the shoulders up, turned left, her gaze lowered as if listening inward. Her deep brown skin is built with layered strokes of cool charcoal and violet shadows under the jaw and around the eye, warmer sienna and russet highlights along cheekbone and forehead l, so her face is luminous and calm rather than posed. Her eyelids are heavy, lashes darkened, and her mouth rests closed in a neutral, self-possessed expression. A broad headscarf wraps her close-cropped dark hair, banded in muted rose, beige, and smoky gray as a folded tail sits near an ear which has a big looped earlobe. Around her neck, a wide red collar encircles her neck and catches a thin pale glint at its edge. Two bead strands, one red and one blue, drop over her shoulders and cross her chest, adding crisp color against an earth-toned palette. Her bare shoulder is brushed in warm browns, with visible grain and dry-brush. Behind her, an even wash of sandy tan and pale gold is softly scumbled, creating an atmosphere keeping the sitter’s presence at the center. Born Karen Christentze Dinesen, Blixen is also known by pen names including Isak Dinesen, She began as a visual artist and carried that eye into her writing. She trained seriously in drawing in Copenhagen and took classes in Paris before Kenya reshaped her life. In the 1920s, she painted portraits and studies alongside the demanding work of running a coffee farm. After returning to Denmark in 1931, she set painting aside for literature; however, this portrait tells its story even to this day.
December 28, 2025 at 5:21 AM
Reposted by Cafe Noir 🧡🦋🧡
mdstamper.bsky.social
"Haze" by Danielle Mckinney (American) - Oil on linen / 2024 - Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY) #WomenInArt #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #DanielleMckinney #Mckinney #TheMet #MetMuseum #art #artText #artwork #BlueskyArt #FigurativeArt #MetropolitanMuseumofArt #WomenPaintingWomen
A woman with deep brown skin sits in a dim room on a patterned sofa or bed. She is barefoot, one leg folded under the other, and she wears an almost sheer, pale-yellow robe or dress. Its translucent fabric catches the only strong light in the scene. Paint is laid on in thick, visible strokes such as golden highlights along her shoulder, cuff, and skirt so the garment feels luminous against a brown-black wall. One cheek rests in a palm as she holds a lit cigarette between its fingers and a thin ribbon of smoke curls upward. Her fingernails are painted a warm red-orange that echoes the ember. Her dark hair is pulled back, and her expression is quiet and intent with wide, reflective eyes and softly defined lips. Her gaze is directed down to our left. In her other hand she loosely grips what appears to be a pair of over-ear headphones, suggested by a band and two rounded earcups rendered in quick, yellow-brown strokes. Behind her, a wall outlet and the soft edge of shadowed furniture anchor the space as an ordinary interior made intimate by darkness. "Haze" is both a literal title with smoke and low light and an vibe as if the air in the painting itself carries a fog of thought. American artist Danielle Mckinney stages the scene so that a figure emerges from a near-black brown background, while her robe becomes a flare of yellow that insists on presence without spectacle. Meanwhile, her cigarette suggests a ritual of everyday life like "a breath in, a breath out" and time passing with minutes pooling. Headphones might infer a choice of silence. Painted in 2024, when the artist was in her early forties and working in Jersey City, this scene aligns with her practice of centering Black women in domestic interiors as protagonists entitled to rest, complexity, and interior life. The room offers no fixed story, but only clues ... and that openness seems to be the point. Repose is not emptiness here. It is agency ... like a moment where the small moments become a narrative.
December 18, 2025 at 9:39 PM
Reposted by Cafe Noir 🧡🦋🧡
mdstamper.bsky.social
“If My Friends Could See Me Now” by Pacita Abad (Filipina American) - Acrylic, painted canvas & gold yarn on stitched, padded canvas / 1991 - SFMOMA (San Francisco, California) #WomenInArt #PacitaAbad #Abad #SelfPortrait #WomensArt #WomenArtists #art #artText #artwork #BlueskyArt #SFMOMA #Trapunto
A quilted, poster-bright scene stacks worlds like cut-out memories with a band of high-rise city buildings under a dark, stormy sky. The phrase “AN AMERICAN DREAM” is painted in all caps like a billboard. Centered below is a brown-skinned woman with long black hair and a large red knit cap. She faces us with arms folded while avoiding our gaze, wearing a striped top edged with bead-like details. Around her, smaller vignettes flicker like an office desk with papers, a grocery cart crowded with goods, a white house behind a picket fence, a red car with each stitched into a padded surface that makes the images feel raised, touchable, and heavy. A looping cord of gold yarn snakes down the right side like Lombard Street, curling toward a small, haystack-like mound at the bottom edge. Artist Pacita Abad’s trapunto technique turns the “dream” into something you can almost measure as it swells, puckers, and presses forward, as if aspiration itself has weight. The montage reads like a catalog of promises often offered to newcomers such as work, property, consumption, mobility, the glitter of a skyline, yet the central figure’s guarded posture complicates the slogan. Her crossed arms and steady, unsmiling gaze suggest vigilance as much as arrival. It’s pride and self-possession, but also the need to brace against scrutiny, exclusion, or the fear of falling through the seams. The figure can be read as a proxy self-portrait for Abad who was born in Basco, Batanes, Philippines. She is one body standing in for many migrant lives while the stitched construction mirrors how immigration is often lived in fragments, repairs, and continuities carried on the skin. By fusing painting with cloth and embroidery-like lines, Abad refuses a single, tidy narrative. Instead, she builds an identity that is assembled rather than granted and is bright, resilient, and insistently present to ask who gets to claim “AN AMERICAN DREAM” and what it costs to keep believing in it.
December 14, 2025 at 5:11 PM
Reposted by Cafe Noir 🧡🦋🧡
mdstamper.bsky.social
“Phillis” by Elizabeth Colomba (French) - Oil on canvas / 2010 - Princeton University Art Museum (New Jersey) #WomenInArt #art #artText #artwork #Princeton #arte #PhillisWheatley #ElizabethColomba #Colomba #BlackArt #ContemporaryArt #ArtHistory #CatArt #ArtBsky #WomensArt #WomenArtists #WomanArtist
A Black woman with dark coffee skin sits on the edge of a narrow iron bed in a modest room, her long red dress pooling in precise folds that catch the muted light. Her features are calm and intent, framed by a brown headwrap. She looks slightly away, thoughtful rather than posed. Around her rest books, loose pages, and writing tools that signal active authorship. Two cats animate the space: a black-and-white one settled closely in her lap and a tabby cat engaged with a fallen quill at the bedside so their small bodies echo her focus and energy. Bare walls, a simple window, and the unadorned bed frame underscore the contrast between the richness of her intellect and the spareness of her surroundings, keeping our attention on her presence, her hands, and the materials of her work. Elizabeth Colomba, a French painter born in Épinay-sur-Seine to parents from Martinique, recasts the first published African American woman poet, Phillis Wheatley, as an autonomous intellectual rather than an enslaved curiosity filtered through white approval. Rather than recreating her Boston household literally, the artist composes an allegorical interior where red cloth, stacked books, and scattered pages affirm Wheatley’s authority over language and learning despite enslavement, surveillance, and precarious freedom. The two cats, playful yet watchful, have been read as stand-ins for her short-lived children and as witnesses to a life spent negotiating tenderness, faith, and racial violence; their engagement with the quill folds biography into symbol. Trained in the French academic tradition and drawing on Old Master composition, Colomba reclaims the pictorial codes that once excluded Black women, inserting Wheatley at the center of art history as a rigorous intellectual, not a decorative exception.
November 7, 2025 at 5:16 AM
Reposted by Cafe Noir 🧡🦋🧡
mdstamper.bsky.social
“Thiếu nữ Huế (Hue Girl)” aka “Lady” by Mai Trung Thứ (Mai Trung Thu) (Vietnamese) – Oil on canvas / 1934 – Singapore Art Museum #WomenInArt #art #artText #artwork #PortraitofaLady #MaiTrungThứ #MaiTrungThu #BlueskyArt #SingaporeArtMuseum #VietnameseArtist #VietnameseArt #1930s #PortraitofaWoman
Painted in 1934, Thiếu nữ Huế (Hue Girl) — sometimes titled Lady — embodies Vietnamese artist Mai Trung Thứ’s refined synthesis of French academic training and Vietnamese poetics. A graduate of the École des Beaux-Arts de l’Indochine in Hanoi, Thứ moved to France, joining a generation of artists who navigated identity amid colonial modernity. His women, clothed in flowing áo dài and framed in muted tones, became emblems of cultural continuity in a rapidly changing world. Seated on a low reddish wooden bench, a young Vietnamese woman wears a high-collared, long-sleeved áo dài in pale grey. Her head tilts slightly to our left, eyes turned softly to the same side rather than toward us. Her warm light-brown skin is modeled gently; dark hair is swept up in a neat chignon (not loose on the shoulders). Her right hand rests across her lap as the left arm extends back with the hand relaxed over the bench edge, fingers loose. Her long tunic drapes over a layered skirt, its hem pooling at the seat. Behind her is a flat, textured ochre field with no drapery or furniture other than the bench. The mood is quiet and inward for a poised, thoughtful, and reserved portrait. The flattened ochre ground and restrained palette frame the unidentified sitter as a self-contained presence, while the delicate modeling and dignified pose express a tenderness central to his portraits. Through subtle elegance rather than overt resistance, Thứ bridged East and West, giving modern Vietnamese painting its lyrical voice. As art historian T.K. Sabapathy observed, Thứ’s portraits are “poised between nostalgia and renewal.” In “Hue Girl,” that balance endures like a serene vision of womanhood and homeland, distilled into light, fabric, and memory.
October 11, 2025 at 1:58 PM
Reposted by Cafe Noir 🧡🦋🧡
mdstamper.bsky.social
“To Tell Them There It’s Got To” by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye (British) – Oil on canvas / 2013 – The Box (Plymouth, England) #WomenInArt #WomenArtists #WomensArt #FemalePainter #LynetteYiadom-Boakye #Yiadom-Boakye #TheBox #art #artText #artwork #blueskyArt #BlackWoman #OilPainting #WomenPaintingWomen
Born in London to Ghanaian parents, British artist Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s 2013 painting “To Tell Them There It’s Got To” exemplifies her depiction of fictional individuals rendered with the dignity and complexity often denied to Black subjects in European portraiture. Her titles act as poems rather than labels: “an extra mark,” she says, “not an explanation.” The phrase “to tell them” implies address and assertion, while “it’s got to” carries urgency or inevitability like an unfinished thought, echoing the figure’s quiet refusal to fully reveal themselves. The ambiguity invites us to ask: Who are they? What is it? That unanswerable tension is central to her art. We see a solitary Black figure in profile, shoulders turned gently away from us and head inclined toward an unseen light. Deep umber, olive, and graphite tones shape the woman’s smooth skin and softly curling hair, merging into a dark, painterly background. Her turtleneck shirt nearly disappears into the same shadowed palette, but faint strokes at the collar and jaw catch reflected light, suggesting quiet movement and breath. Just the stillness of a person who exists within, not against, darkness is presented. The brushwork alternates between thin, translucent washes and thicker impasto, leaving visible gestures of creation. This intimacy feels private but alive, like a moment caught between thought and turning. Yiadom-Boakye studied at Central Saint Martins, Falmouth, and the Royal Academy Schools. By the time she painted this work, she had been shortlisted for the Turner Prize and was reshaping the language of contemporary portraiture. Her figures neither narrate nor protest, but they simply are, existing beyond stereotype or demand. The painting is housed at The Box, Plymouth, England (a museum devoted to reimagining British history and amplifying diverse and contemporary voices).
October 9, 2025 at 4:34 AM
Reposted by Cafe Noir 🧡🦋🧡
mdstamper.bsky.social
“Well Prepared and Maladjusted” by Amy Sherald (American) – Oil on canvas / 2008 – Whitney Museum of American Art (New York) #WomenInArt #WomenPaintingWomen #WomenArtists #art #artText #artwork #WomensArt #AfricanAmericanArt #AfricanAmericanArtist #WhitneyMuseumofAmericanArt #AmySherald #Sherald
A tall Black woman stands against a vivid, turquoise-blue ground mottled with faint, watery red drips. American artist Amy Sherald renders her skin in nuanced grays of soft charcoal, pewter, and silver so that tonal shifts depict her cheekbones, brows, and hands. Her gaze meets ours directly, steady and calm. She wears a short-sleeved, pink blouse scattered with small white polka dots and tied with a large bow at the collar, paired with a plain white skirt. Her bare arms rest alongside her body. Her short natural hair forms a simple silhouette. The composition gives primacy to presence, poise, and style. Painted soon after Sherald completed her training in Baltimore, this work marks the emergence of key strategies that would define her practice. She had encountered the sitter, a curatorial intern at the Walters Art Museum, and was struck by her height, hairstyle, and thrifted polka-dot outfit: “I saw my story in her,” Sherald recalls. Photographing the model and then translating the likeness to paint, she eliminated place to focus on personhood. The grayscale skin is a deliberate nod to the history of black-and-white photography and self-representation. Sherald refuses to let color stand in for race, inviting viewers to read character, not stereotype. The title, lifted from a poem, functions like one of Sherald’s “small poems,” offering a runway into the painting’s psychology: a subject who is impeccably composed yet out of step with rigid social expectations. The speckled blue ground, with its faint reddish drips, signals an earlier phase in Sherald’s evolution, before she moved toward flatter planes of color; nevertheless, the essentials are here: stylish self-presentation, quiet authority, and a reparative re-centering of Black life. Sherald has said her mission is “to put more complex stories of Black life in the forefront of people’s minds and on the walls of museums…to take up space and reclaim time.”
October 1, 2025 at 9:43 PM
Reposted by Cafe Noir 🧡🦋🧡
mdstamper.bsky.social
"Hope is the thing with feathers (The Little Bird)" by Amy Sherald (American) - Oil on linen / 2021 - Hauser & Wirth (Los Angeles, California) #WomenInArt #WomanArtist #FemalePainter #AmySherald #Sherald #art #artwork #artText #BlueskyArt #AmericanArtist #AmericanArt #hope #WomensArt #WomenArtists
Renowned American artist Amy Sherald uses her signature gray tones to depict a front-facing Black youth with short natural hair standing centered against a flat, pale blue background. The figure wears a knee-length, short-sleeve red shift dress boldly printed with a large cream silhouette of a bird in mid-flight across the torso, and a white heart near the hem. Their arms hang straight at the sides, hands relaxed. The lighting is even; edges are crisp; there are no cast shadows, emphasizing calm, direct presence. This portrait draws upon an 1891 Emily Dickinson poem, invoking the bird as emblem of endurance, inner resilience, and hope across storms. The figure is a dancer from Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, whom Sherald spotted on stage; Sherald was compelled by her presence and spirit. Sherald’s technique is key to the painting’s power. She regularly paints Black subjects using grisaille (rendering skin tones in a spectrum of grays) set against bold monochromatic or vibrantly colored backgrounds. Skin color becomes not the spotlight, but a way to mediate visibility, identity, race, and presence. The figure’s dress, richly patterned with a soaring bird motif, becomes a carrier of symbolic meaning: the bird in Dickinson’s poem “perches in the soul” and “sings the tune without the words,” a metaphor Sherald amplifies through visual form. This work was part of Sherald’s “The Great American Fact” exhibition at Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles, where she sought to represent Black life not as tragedy or spectacle but ordinary, luminous, full: the “dash” of life between exclamation points and periods. Sherald has spoken of resisting the framing of Black life as primarily grief or struggle, instead painting moments of leisure, presence, dignity, and hope. The bird motif, the posture and glance, the interplay of clothes, light, pattern, and background all suggest a quiet yet unyielding optimism: hope does not demand reward, does not ask for acknowledgment, but persists.
September 17, 2025 at 4:25 PM
Reposted by Cafe Noir 🧡🦋🧡
mdstamper.bsky.social
“Knotty by Nature” by Elise Kendrick (American) - Acrylic on birch panel / 2022 - Frist Art Museum (Nashville, Tennessee) #WomenInArt #WomanArtist #AcrylicArt #artText #art #WomensArt #WomenArtists #EliseKendrick #AfricanAmericanArt #Kendrick #Frist #AfricanAmericanArtist #beauty #FristArtMuseum
Elise Kendrick, a Nashville-based artist, created “Knotty by Nature” in 2022 at a moment when her work was gaining wider recognition for its focus on celebrating Black identity, natural hair, and cultural heritage. Working in acrylic on birch panel, Kendrick fuses traditional portraiture with modern textures, layering rich colors and carving depth into this close-up portrait of a young Black woman turned to face us. Her hair is styled in several small, coiled bantu knots across her crown, each carefully detailed. Her skin glows with layered tones of deep browns, ochre, and gold, blended with hints of blue and green that add depth and radiance. The woman’s large almond-shaped eyes look steadily outward beneath defined brows, while her full lips are almost closed. Light falls gently, highlighting her cheekbones and jawline, while shadows contour her neck. Enriching contemporary portraiture with authenticity, cultural grounding, and unapologetic self-expression, the painting reflects both personal and collective narratives for Kendrick’s lived experience as a Black woman navigating questions of beauty, resilience, and representation. By centering Black women in dignified, powerful portraits, Kendrick challenges narrow standards of beauty and affirms natural hair for creativity and pride. At the time, Kendrick was active in community art spaces in Nashville, participating in group exhibitions and contributing to conversations around representation in Southern museums. Her work resonated in the wake of broader cultural movements affirming Black identity and confronting systemic erasure in art history. “Knotty by Nature” conveys dignity and strength while celebrating natural beauty and cultural identity. It embodies Kendrick’s commitment to presenting Black women not as subjects of exoticism or stereotype, but as individuals whose presence commands respect and intimacy.
September 14, 2025 at 3:14 AM