We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Lynette Charters a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Lynette , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

The Missing Women/Parents has been the most meaningful project I have ever worked on. When I started working on this series, I had no idea it would last for so long, but it has been very well received and while there is a demand, I will keep making them.

I created the series to address the erasure of the female experience from recorded history, it also acknowledges similar issues affecting BIPOC and LGBTQ+ folk, most of us in fact. How we perceive and appreciate the world is just as important as how we appear in it.

Back in 2017 when I conceived the series, I had struggled through parenting two kids through their early childhood, and I’d left my animation career of over 25 years to take care of them. Once they were more self-sufficient, I couldn’t find work even in an entry level job. It’s a common story for childrearing parents. I decided if I couldn’t work, I should paint about it. It had been a long time since I’d been in fine art college, I’d studied sculpture and printmaking at college, but I didn’t have access to a printing press or workshop. I was untutored in painting, but I did have a good knowledge of fine art history. I watched carefully and learned from famous paintings, and painters around me both in college, in animation, and among my artist friends. Working with a process was very familiar to me, as printmaking and animation both use processes and layering. Sculpture taught me to love materials and textures, so it was natural for me to turn to using more sturdy materials than flat paper or canvass.

They always say we should make art about what we know. As I started working, I became conscious of my personal situation. Childrearing parents work hard for years with little support, and we receive little or no help in reentering the job market. As a parent, and as an older female artist, my disadvantages weighed on my mind. Until I had a family, I had no problem finding work. I was painting on wood, and images of piles of money in the shape of breasts as assets began to appear. Then the wood knots (as nipples) left bare from unpainted wood surface made an appearance. I was thinking along the lines of unpaid labor and loss of identity in very simple terms. It started as an abstract concept but I soon became uncomfortable with the images of dislocated breasts so I decided I needed to give the person owning the breasts a presence so they could have an identity to empathize with. I searched my brain for a setting or an identifiable surrounding. For obvious reasons I came up with the gallery installation setting. There is still a huge problem with women painters being absent from the art history books our kids learn from in school and we have little presence in museums, auctions, and high-end galleries. It very much reflects our lived experience. The Missing Women format is the most benign way I could think of to make these issues apparent. Even so, pointing out issues, asking important questions and opening this dialogue means I’ve been accused of being aggressive but it’s just an observation.

Making The Missing Women/Parents paintings is a 3-step process. First, I must find relevant images, I spend time researching painters and paintings from history. The ones with the most pertinent stories or images are always the best and I try to be inclusive of all women, including trans women, so many of our stories have not been told. I then find a suitable frame; I collect secondhand ones. I find one that is either similar in appearance to the frame the original art is in, or something from that era. Then I take my selected image candidates to the hardware store and look for wooden boards with knots in the desired geographical locations. They should have the right personality, the wood needs to be undamaged, and they need to be to scale with the frame. After I have selected the wood, I figure out where the border of the image falls. I draw this out and cut the wood and cradle it, so it lies flat. I draw out the image of the reference art on the wood and start painting. When it’s finished, I attach the painting to the frame.

At first, I didn’t know if I could pull off the logistics of making a whole series for an installation. I wasn’t at all confident I could find enough pieces of wood with the knots in the correct location to make a whole room full of Missing Women/Parents. I started tentatively and found that I could indeed make it work. To begin with they were all on a single board but as I got more ambitious and wanted to make larger pieces, I started to attach boards together to span the painting I was referencing. The packaging foil came a little later, referencing so many boxes of chocolates (or sparkly dresses or jewelry) we’re bought to show appreciation for what we do, instead of paying us equally. We still have no good logical reason why the ERA has not been ratified.

I started showing the Missing Women/Parents long before the me-too movement, also before the current attacks on reproductive rights had effectively kicked in, and I got pushback from folk. They would ask me why I was making feminist art, don’t we do ok? I would ask them why haven’t we ratified the ERA in America and achieved parity in wages? Why do we still not have support with child rearing? Why do judges regularly let off rapists because they are believed against the testimony of victims, or a long sentence would have a “severe impact” on the life of the perpetrator? Why do kids get sent home for wearing short skirts and spaghetti straps? Why is domestic abuse not a priority? I pointed out that most of what we had was platitudes or Band-Aids; that progress is slow and begrudged and if we don’t resist, we go backwards. Sadly, I was right.

We’ve been deemed unladylike or “nasty” if we ask inconvenient questions. This dialogue has been useful to keep anyone who does not identify with the prevalent narrative in their place. These questions don’t work for the people in power who control the budget, if you can get someone to provide free childcare and work 18 cents/dollar for free, you can understand why they have very little desire to fix it. The narrative is that childrearers are supported by a partner, but this often isn’t the case. Women of color are disproportionately affected by this wage gap for many reasons out of their control, and there is a big imbalance of representation in politics.

To sweeten the delivery, I deliver my message with some recognizable eye-catching images and a little humor. The Images of the Missing Women/Parents are a useful tool. They are familiar but odd looking. It is conceptual art which doesn’t look like conceptual art, and this intrigues people. Once the concept has been recognized it requires us to ask ourselves how the issue relates to us.

The more privilege we have, the easier it is to be heard but people can be unwilling to speak up. often it takes folk a while to figure out that something isn’t equal, privilege is blind. I subvert the work of male artists to have my voice be heard. I’m hijacking their platform. It’s intentionally cheeky, audacious, and fun. I try to be aware of my own privilege, so I choose to use it to speak up; especially now I’m older because with age, I find it easier not to care so much what folk think about me. I figure it’s my turn to speak up for my younger self and younger generations. Often parents turn up with younger folk to my shows. This connection makes me very happy. If I can empower the next generations with an understanding of our social confines, then maybe they’ll be able to negotiate themselves and their lives with more self-assurance and conviction than my generation could when we were younger.

Lynette , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I wanted to be a graphic designer at college, but they said I didn’t fit in, my work was too big and messy, so they transferred me to the fine art department. I graduated with my BFA magna cum laude from Cardiff College and earned a grant to study my MFA at Chelsea in London. After leaving college I needed to figure out how to earn money and I fell into an animation job by chance. I thought I might be able to practice fine art while working in animation, but this turned out not to be the case. When you’re creating someone else’s project, your creative energy is mostly spent by the end of the day. Still, I liked being in the animation industry, I enjoyed working as a team, it was interesting learning a new discipline and I was thrilled at being paid to draw. It was a heavily male environment and although many were very supportive, many were less so, and at times this proved to be a little suffocating, but it afforded me to travel, and I got to work in some beautiful European cities, (London, Paris, Berlin, and Koln). Eventually I got exhausted from always travelling where the work was and living out of a suitcase, so I went to LA, the only city I knew where you didn’t have to constantly change employers to stay in work. I worked on Warner Bros’ Space Jam originally and then moved to Dreamworks and worked there for five years on The Prince of Egypt, The Road to Eldorado, and Spirit. The last feature film I worked on was Looney Tunes Back in Action for Warner Bros again before I got pregnant. Consequently after 25 plus years in animation the job offers dried up. We moved to Washington and finding it difficult to find paid employment I began to practice fine art again, and I haven’t looked back. I never intended to leave fine art for so long, so it is good to be back.

The Missing Women/Parents Series is a body of work which can be viewed or bought individually. Presenting the series as a solo show allows the option of a museum installation. As I make and sell works, new pieces are painted and introduced with new stories brought to light. I feel like I’m speaking for them. I’ve been told it’s creepy walking into a room of ‘void’ bodies. I’ve also been told that it makes us see them better for who they were or might have been. I can only interpret this to mean that we appreciate their existence through their absence, because we’re not distracted by their body image, and how attractive they may or may not be in the eyes of the viewer.

The shows come with an option of a docent tour which serves as an interactional educational experience. My husband John Serembe is a SAG actor. He uses dry humor, his docent has no hint of empathy, much as art history traditionally has been presented to us, but our version is uncensored. His performance mimics any other docent we’ve seen in a museum, but he mentions all the unflattering details about the artists, how they treated the models or the women in the artists’ lives. In the past these details have been edited because they were deemed too unflattering for the male narrative. Serembe’s docent character very much enjoys his platform of being the only voice in the room (in his opinion worth listening to), and he has blind faith that you will still love the artists because of their talent, regardless of how reprehensible they may have been. He also presumes that you will judge the models, or women in the artists’ lives just as he does, as much as history has in the past. It’s a way of putting the mirror up and forcing us to see how we treat people as a society. He tends to get heckled a little which adds to the fun.

Personally, I think a famous artist’s talent can be applauded while we acknowledge their deplorable immoral conduct. If we don’t report history, we don’t learn from it, but to learn from it we must present it from all perspectives. With a museum comes a gift shop in which I sell merchandise like my book, postcards, and fridge magnets. It’s an all-encompassing experience.

I’m proud of the gallery shows and John’s tour, it’s wonderful when my art speaks to someone enough for them to want to take a painting or the book home. What I’m most proud of is the educational part of my practice. I too have learned a lot and still have much to learn. There is so much of the traditional narrative that does not involve our health, wellbeing and even our autonomy. I like to empower people who do not usually get the platform, the best part is when I see the light in someone’s eyes, when some lively discussion is provoked, it makes it all worthwhile.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I had to learn to see myself through my own, not someone else’s lens. The whole reason my series came about was because I realized we are brainwashed from childhood to see ourselves from another’s point of view. This gaslighting is very powerful because we encounter many images and situations which enforce these ways of thinking.

We are bombarded by images of “perfection” which are unattainable because they don’t exist in the real world. We are told what to wear, how to speak, when to speak, how much to speak, what to think, how to behave, what responsibilities, careers and hobbies are appropriate for us, how ambitious we should or shouldn’t be; all this information is usually contradictory, and so sets us up for failure. It’s a means of control. Even now I must stop and correct myself when I start to care too much what people think about me if I speak up, or don’t behave in a certain manner. I remind myself “you do you”, let them worry about themselves. Don’t take on their baggage.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I am a survivor of domestic abuse. I was at a low point in my life after I left college, before I started work. This is a vulnerable time for many people. I met a bloke and he very quickly started to take over. At first, I didn’t mind, I didn’t feel confident I’d been good at making decisions for myself, in fact I’d made a few bad decisions, so I thought maybe I was better off if I let someone else make the decisions for a while. I was so wrong. Soon I wasn’t allowed to do anything without his permission, and I wasn’t allowed to speak freely. Gradually he tried to whittle away at my self-esteem and my identity. He was super possessive and he batted away anyone else who cared about me, I was completely alone. I was scared to ask anyone for help because when he felt threatened, he was extremely unreasonable, and I wasn’t exactly sure what he was capable of. Eventually I managed to pluck up courage and escape with the help of my parents. I left almost everything behind, but it didn’t matter. I took myself back and that is the most important thing I have. It’s the most important thing any of us have.      

Contact Info:

• Website: www.lcharters.com
• Instagram: @lynettecharters
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lynettecharters/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0saN5l07g0
• Other: The Missing Women Book. https://www.lulu.com/shop/lynette-charters-and-john-serembe/lynette-charters-the-missing-women-series/hardcover/product-nyekkk.html?page=1&pageSize=4
  Upcoming shows: The Missing Women/Parents Series exhibition/installation with docent performance by John Serembe Wagner House Gallery at Lakewold Gardens in Tacoma, WA. https://lakewoldgardens.org August 25th-October 1st, 2023. Opening reception August 25th, 5-7pm.

  The Missing Women/Parents exhibition/installation solo show with docent performance by John Serembe The Gallery at Tacoma Community College in Tacoma, WA. https://www.tacomacc.edu/tcc-life/arts-culture/the-art-gallery Curated by Dr. Jennifer Olson. Jan 2nd-31st, 2025

Image Credits
Photo of me credit: Yuri Serembe All other image credits: John Serembe.