Viola Frey

Born in 1933 and raised on her family’s vineyard in Lodi, California, Frey felt compelled to create and exhibit artwork at an early age. When she was eleven, she submitted a rendition of a Matisse drawing for exhibition at the Sacramento Public Library and was excited when it was accepted. However, as she later reflected in her 1995 interview for the Archives of American Art, even at the age of eleven, she realized “the point was not to draw like Matisse but to draw like yourself.”

Text From: http://www.artistslegacyfoundation.org/legacy-artists/Viola-Frey/biography.php

You can read more about Viola here

Carmen Herrera

“I began a lifelong process of purification, a process of taking away what isn’t essential”

You can read more about Carmen here at the Lisson Gallery

Vivienne Westwood

‘I’ve constantly tried to provoke people into thinking afresh and for themselves, to escape their inhibitions and Programming’. See and read more at the V&A

Dora Maar

Surrealism, erotica, photojournalism and acid: in this beautifully curated show, Dora Maar’s creativity far outweighs her relationship with Picasso. Read the full article on her life and work here

Delia Derbyshire

Pioneer of electronic music. ‘ What we are doing now is not important for itself’ she said ‘ but one day someone might be interested enough to carry things forward and create something wonderful on these foundations’ Read more about her extraordinary achievements here

Fabienne Verdier

I am an intrepid woman, a bit of a rebel maybe’ – Read the full interview in Studio International by Anna McNay here

You can also watch her work on Vimeo here

Sarah Purvey

“ I work predominantly in clay and on paper and explore an intensely physical relationship with drawing throughout my practice.  The vessels is tasked to carry and map the journey through my emotional landscape.
I make outside of the vessel but it always draws me back, in the same fixating way a figurative artist repeats drawing and interpreting the human form and the landscape artist interprets connections to their surrounding terrain, the vessel is all of that for me.
The vessel carries thoughts and ideas, revealing and concealing glimpses of self during the making progress. The vessel is an autobiographical, meditative place, a place to hide in plain site. There’s no room inside the vessel for the placement of external objects, they are not vases or pots to hold anything outside of themselves as their internal space is already full, full of memories of time and place captured in the making.”

You can see more of her work here