100 Hot Flash Women

Picture
Pamela Hastings'
100 Hot Flash! Women Portrait Project
Ever since I was old enough to hold a crayon, I drew and authored stories in black and white marbled composition books. I have been painting, sculpting, writing, and teaching arts ever since. I did Soft Sculpture quilted portraits in the Eighties in VT, painted portraits on paper after I came West, moving to canvas when I realized how expensive framing paper is.

The Hot Flash project began in the Eighties, when I recognized the poor status of women in general in this country, despite the Women’s Movement, older women, menopause and beyond. Since then, I've created Hot Flash dolls, written, and published: HOT FLASH: A Celebration, and now have a Hot Flash e-book/experience to help women embrace and express our creative selves. After 25 years, when I could no longer afford to support myself with my art, I took a “regular” job as an occupational therapist and conceived of the 100 Hot Flash Women project to keep me painting regularly, creating a show of women I admire, with accompanying stories more than 80 canvases over the last three years, culminating in a show last summer. Now that I am retired from health care for the third and final time, I am continuing to paint portraits…and since Images and words always exist side by side in my work, I am interviewing all the subjects I've painted, in an ongoing quest to celebrate the “ordinary” women of our generation.
I’m soliciting photographs, clear face shots of women you think should be included in this ongoing project—I’m improving my technique with repetition—this has grown into a life-time project, an online exhibit…or a book. I’m also selling portraits at $100 plus shipping for one person on an 18” canvas or two people on a 20” x 24” canvas. Photos to [email protected] I’m also starting a series of more emotional paintings, new sculptures, doing as much drawing, reading, writing, studying, exercise, eating well, and being outside as I can. This Adventure of the last third of life, of taking advantage of having worked hard in health care and saving my money for 45 years. Now it's All Art, All the Time, and I've been jettisoning other
obligations to the extent that sometimes I wonder if there will be anything left. But there IS, including my 2 blogs, 3 FaceBook pages, and my intermittent commix, Graphic Grannies.