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.

It's not enough to have a few women's studies courses. Why is it more important to study Paul Revere's midnight ride than it is Susan B. Anthony's 50-year effort to transform the face of America for women? When you're in school, most of the events you study are about men. Men's activities lauded and repeated over and over. What about us? What about commemorating the decades-long struggle for suffrage? Why don't we hear those stories over and over and over again. It's almost inconceivable for men to understand what it would be like to live without that constant valorization.

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.

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.

I feel like I have at least begun to make a contribution, but my most significant concern has to do with whether my actual art will be preserved for future generations or be erased.

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.

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.