Women Artists Changed Everything. Your Journal Can Too.

This morning I woke up early—one of those gray Portland mornings where the sky feels close and the house is quiet. Sadie was already at the library, Gesso was snoring at the foot of the bed, and I had about forty minutes before the day got loud. So I did what I always do: I sat at the kitchen table with my journal and a cup of coffee that was probably cold by the time I finished.

I wasn't making art. I was just... truthing. Collaging a ticket stub from a show I'd been too anxious to enjoy. Spilling blue watercolor over words I didn't want to say out loud. Gluing in a photo of my babcia's embroidery—her hands, her stitches, that Polish refusal to make anything simple.

And then it hit me: this is exactly what Frida Kahlo was doing when she painted herself into corners. This is what Georgia O'Keeffe was doing when she refused to paint what other people wanted to see. This is what every woman artist who ever insisted on filling a blank page with what was true was doing—claiming the right to make something that mattered, even if nobody else was watching.

That's what I want to talk about today, especially as International Women's Day shows up in three days.

The Artists Who Made Honesty Possible

Frida Kahlo: Self-Portrait as Revolution

Let's start with the most obvious one—the artist everyone knows, but maybe not in the way that matters for our journals.

Frida wasn't painting to impress museums. She was painting because she was in pain, and pain needs a witness. She filled page after page with her own face—her unibrow, her dark eyes, her body broken and reassembled and broken again. She wrote in her diary: "I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best."

That's art journaling before anyone called it that. That's saying: My face is worth looking at. My pain is worth documenting. My story matters, even if I'm the only one who ever sees it.

The radical part? She wasn't trying to be "good." She was trying to be honest. She painted herself flat, bold, unflinching. She used colors that weren't "realistic." She painted her wounds and her desires and her rage all on the same page. No apologies. No "but first, let me study the masters." Just: here's what I see when I look at myself, and that's enough.

Georgia O'Keeffe: Refusing the Gaze

Then there's Georgia O'Keeffe, who spent her whole life refusing to explain her paintings.

Everyone wanted to tell her what her work meant. Men especially. They looked at her flowers and saw sexuality. They looked at her abstractions and invented meaning. They wanted to make her work about what they could understand.

Georgia said: no thanks. She painted from the inside out. She painted what she felt when she felt it. She said she painted flowers "big like the way people have to look at them," not because they were trying to be dirty (the interpretations of others), but because she wanted people to actually see the flower. Not the idea of the flower. The actual, intimate, complicated thing.

For art journalers, that's the permission we need most: you don't owe anyone an explanation. You don't have to make sense. You just have to make it true.

Judy Chicago: Making Space for Everyone

And then there's Judy Chicago, who refused to work alone at all. She created collaborative pieces, invited other women into her artistic practice, and insisted that the "domestic" was as worthy of attention as anything hanging in a gallery.

She sewed. She embroidered. She used materials that women had been told didn't count as "real art." And she said: these hands, these traditions, this work that generations of women have been doing in silence—this matters. This is art. You are an artist, even if nobody gave you permission yet.

That's the lineage of art journaling. That's why we're allowed to be messy, collaborative, intimate, domestic. Because women artists fought for the right to make something that mattered without waiting for institutional approval.

Why This Is Feminist (Even If You Don't Think of Yourself That Way)

Art journaling is a feminist practice. I don't mean that in a political slogan way. I mean it in the way that matters for your actual life:

Personal beats institutional. Your journal doesn't need a gallery. Your page doesn't need an audience. The work is real even if it's only for you.

Process beats product. Frida's journal is worth as much as her "finished" paintings because the work isn't about the finished thing. It's about what happened while you were making it. How you felt. What you discovered. That's the whole point.

Vulnerability is strength. Every time you fill a page with something true—something messy, scared, angry, hopeful—you're doing what took centuries for women to claim: the right to be complex. To not have to be "fixed" or "polished" or "likeable." To just be.

Your voice matters, even alone. Especially alone. Your words, your colors, your collage choices, your terrible handwriting, your inside-jokes that nobody else will understand—they all count. They're all worth a page.

Three Spreads to Honor This

If you want to mark International Women's Day in your journal, here are three ways to do it. None of these need to look "good." They just need to be honest.

Spread 1: Self-Portrait Like Frida

What you need: magazine cutouts OR photos of your own face, scissors, glue stick, paint or markers, one full two-page spread

What you do:

Cut or tear images—your own photos, faces from magazines, anything that catches your eye.
Arrange them on your pages. Overlap them. Layer them. Make it chaotic.
Add words: feelings, complaints, things you're proud of, things that hurt. No editing.
Paint or color over parts of it. Cover up the stuff you don't want to see. Highlight the stuff you do.
If you hate it, that's perfect. That means you were honest.

The point: You're not making a portrait for anyone to display. You're making a truth-map of what it feels like to be you right now. Color doesn't matter. Skill doesn't matter. Honesty does.

Spread 2: Abstract Color Study Like Georgia

What you need: watercolors OR colored pencils, one full two-page spread, your gut feeling about how you want to feel

What you do:

Don't plan. Just think: what color does today feel like? What color does rage feel like? Joy? Confusion?
Paint or color big. Take up space. Don't worry about "matching."
Add marks: lines, dots, shapes that have no name. Let your hand move.
If you want to, add one word somewhere—the feeling underneath the colors.
When it feels done, stop. Don't fix it. Don't second-guess it.

The point: This is for you to discover what you're feeling while you make it, not to explain it to anyone else. The colors are the language. You don't need words or skill. You need honesty.

Spread 3: Collaboration Page

What you need: one blank page, people you trust (friends, family, even someone you admire from afar), markers, collage supplies, whatever they want to add

What you do:

Set the page up with a theme (or don't—let it be a surprise). Leave lots of blank space.
Ask the women in your life to add one thing: a sentence, a drawing, a color, a scribble, a photo. Something that matters to them.
Don't explain. Just hand them markers and a page.
Glue it all into your journal and sit with what you made together.

The point: Art journaling doesn't have to be solo. Some of the most honest pages happen when you're making space for other people's truths too. This is Judy Chicago's move—claiming the domestic, the collaborative, the intimate as art.

This International Women's Day, Give Yourself Permission

Here's what Frida, Georgia, and Judy all knew: you don't have to wait for permission to make art. You don't have to be trained. You don't have to be good. You don't even have to finish anything.

You just have to claim a page as yours. Fill it with what's true. Say the thing that's been sitting in your chest all week. Paint the color of anger. Glue in the photo that nobody else thinks is beautiful. Write the words that don't make sense to anyone but you.

That's it. That's the whole thing. That's why we make these pages.

This International Women's Day—whether you know these artists or not, whether you consider yourself an artist or not—fill your journal like you owe nobody an explanation. Because you don't. Your page is yours. Your voice is yours. Your truth is worth taking up space.

That's what these women fought for. That's what we get to keep doing.

Go fill a page. Make it honest. Make it mess. Make it yours.

You've got this. Go drink some water.

—Renna