Jill Cannady
Jill Cannady’s current series, Women of the Storm, differs most conspicuously from her last series, Trouble With Paradise, in the gender of the persons rendered. Whereas the physical strength of men is no match for their terrifying real or imagined predicaments, these are women who manage to cope.
Elemental chaos is portrayed in a manner recollective of the ukiyo-e master Hokusai. The cataclysmic power of his Great Wave off Kanagawa is evoked and further suggested by Cannady’s presentation of this elongated scene in three connected segments, a frequent device of Edo print masters.
I set the stage with developed action drawings suggesting the circumstances confronting women during and after natural disasters – tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, waterspouts, tsunamis. Women are most often left to deal with the aftermath on a local level. These works grew out of my own efforts to imagine experiencing such extreme natural phenomena to which we are all vulnerable.
The other drawings of individual situations, and the smaller works, represent a variety of emotions- fear, anger, resignation, thankfulness, relief, even humor- that women all over the world experience in similar circumstances.