An Ideal Girl is a series of gouache paintings on rag paper inspired by instructional posters from India in the 1970′s. The posters served as templates for Indian boys showing the correct behavior expected of them by their parents, and the society at large.
Using this concept as inspiration, I’ve created the Ideal Girl series to suggest environmentally and socially responsible habits for the young women of today: the need to tend a garden, write letters to relatives, wash the dishes, protect endangered species and read books.
Currently I have been motivated by the threats to women and girls’ identities and their equal position in society, to work on an updated version of the Ideal Girl paintings. For this reason I have expanded the series to include Strong Women as role models.