I go to make art as who I am as a person. The fact that I am a woman comes into play maybe in the kinds of things I'm interested in or in the way I structure a canvas.

I believe in art that is connected to real human feeling, that extends itself beyond the limits of the art world to embrace all people who are striving for alternatives in an increasingly dehumanized world. I am trying to make art that relates to the deepest and most mythic concerns of human kind and I believe that, at this moment of history, feminism is humanism.

Because men have a history, it is difficult for them to imagine what it is like to grow up without one, or the sense of personal expansion that comes from discovering that we women have a worthy heritage. Along with pride often comes rage – rage that one has been deprived of such a significant knowledge.

There's no question that many more women artists are showing worldwide now than they were when I was a young woman, and that's really great.

You shouldn't have to justify your work.

So women are at the beginning of building a language, and not all women are conscious of it.

Even if I am simply one more woman laying one more brick in the foundation of a new and more humane world, it is enough to make me rise eagerly from my bed each morning and face the challenge of breaking the historic silence that has held women captive for so long.