Women Who Led Through Story: An Art Show by Patricia Streeper

Last week I had the opportunity to attend an artist’s talk by painter Patricia Streeper at The Story Center, located in the Mid-Continent Public Library’s Woodneath Branch. Patti is a fellow retiree and friend from Hallmark Cards, and she has taken up painting since she retired. She currently has two art shows during Women’s History Month—this show at Woodneath and another at the art gallery in Lenexa City Hall in Lenexa, Kansas.

Streeper’s show at The Story Center is titled, appropriately enough, “Women Who Led Through Story.” It focuses on women who somehow had storytelling in their lives.

During her talk at Woodneath on March 2, Streeper said she wanted viewers of her work to be curious about the subjects of her portraits. In my case, she succeeded, and I have looked into the lives of some of these women.

Streeper’s show depicts portraits of strong women who made a difference in their communities. The storytelling behind her show relates differently in each of the portraits. For some, their profession might be storytelling, others told stories in their art, philosophy, or the preservation of culture. For example, one of Streeper’s portraits depicts Zitkala-Sa, a Yankton Lakota educator, musician, and Native American activist in her native dress. Zitkala-Sa (Red Bird), known as Gertrude Bonnin in white culture, spent time in both Native American and white societies. Among her many endeavors were becoming the secretary of the Society of American Indians and later editing that society’s American Indian Magazine. She also co-composed the first Native American opera, The Sun Dance. Clearly storytelling was a part of her life’s work.

Another portrait in the Woodneath show is of Etty Hillesum, a Dutch Jewish writer killed in Auschwitz in 1943. Before her death, she wrote letters and diaries that described both the mistreatment of Jews by the Nazis in Amsterdam and also her religious awakening during that time of persecution—two stories that might seem contradictory. But as she wrote from one concentration camp, “Those two months behind barbed wire have been the two richest and most intense months of my life, in which my highest values were so deeply confirmed.” She wrote also, “Everywhere things are both very good and very bad at the same time. The two are in balance, everywhere and always.” Hillesum found faith in the midst of horror, something we today might want to remember.

One review of Streeper’s work says her style “is realistic with an insistent deployment of a grid pattern in the paintings, which is sometimes subtle and other times overt and dominating.” When Streeper spoke at Woodneath, she said she started with a photograph of each woman, then translated those into a grid on her canvas. From there, she used squares in the grid to evoke something unique about each woman. So, for example, the light squares in the portrait of Etty Hillesum are meant to evoke her growing enlightenment. The small neutral squares in the portrait of Gertrude Bell evoke the sands of the Mid-Eastern deserts where Bell was influential. And the squares in the face of Maxine Greene emphasize the character lines in this educator’s face.

In another aspect of storytelling, Streeper said that she tried to look for women whose stories are not frequently told. The women represent many races, eras, and professions. These women are both individual in their achievements and representative of their time and place.

I spent the evening at Streeper’s show thinking not only about her portraits in particular, but also about the differences and similarities in storytelling through writing and through art. Both writing and art are a combination of creativity and skill, talent and practice, and the resulting work is determined by the choices the creator makes. Streeper tells her stories on a flat canvas, usually 30 inches by 30 inches or 36 inches by 36 inches. She must use that confined space to show a character and hint at a life. Still, she has an infinite number of colors and can add her own interpretations and embellishments to the photographs that inspire her. By contrast, writers are limited to 26 letters, though they have thousands of words at their disposal and their manuscripts can be thousands of words. But story is story, and the outcome is determined by whether the piece speaks to the human hearts who experience it.

I thoroughly enjoyed seeing Streeper’s work and hearing her discuss it. I am biased because Patti is a friend and because both of us have morphed from business careers to more creative endeavors. I am always awed when I see hidden talents emerge in people I know, and particularly when they show a creativity that seems to force itself to the surface after many years of neglect.

I urge anyone in the Kansas City area to take the time to view one or both of her current shows. Streeper’s show at Woodneath will be available until May 1, 2022. Her show at Lenexa City Hall will only be available through March 27, 2022.

When have you been impressed by art of a type other than what you create?