Michaela Yearwood-Dan

The Great Women Artists

Katy Hessel

Arts

4.8 • 877 Ratings

🗓️ 7 May 2025

⏱️ 46 minutes

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Summary

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is one of the most exciting painters working in the world today, Michaela Yearwood-Dan. Hailed for her works that bloom, dance, and come alive when you are witness to them, with an abundance of textures, weathers, colours, mark-makings, and more, Yearwood-Dan intertwines the botanical with abstraction, and brings painting back to its natural-like essence. Never restricting herself to just one medium, Yearwood-Dan works across ceramics, sound, installation, performance, and all-encompassing paintings that can range from small to the colossal, with some measuring up to 8-metres-wide. See them in the flesh and it’s like seeing an entire ecosystem unfold, embedded with hidden languages, whether it be the symbolism she uses or the small elements of text, poetry and song lyrics, that add another dimension to her rich, embellished worlds. Raised in London as the youngest of three girls, by parents and grandparents that taught her about craft, weaving, seamstressing, Yearwood-Dan completed her studies at Brighton from 2013–2016, where she graduated top of her class, before going onto experiment with an artistic language that has constantly been growing and reinventing, and pushing paint to its limits. While early work – at the time I met her in around 2019, when she invited me for a studio visit when we were both in our mid 20s – explored more interior images intertwined with house plants, it has been incredible to watch her work mould into spaces of abundance, possibility and exhilaration. And indeed, her work has been described by the renowned writer and curator Ekow Eshun as having “a sense of boundless possibility”, which feels apt for a time like today, when it feels more than ever for art to be our guide to expanding our imagination, and also joy in times of despair. This is exactly the topic of Yearwood-Dan’s new exhibition, opening at Hauser & Wirth in London on 13 May, titled No Time for Despair, referencing a line from Toni Morrison’s 2004 article for The Nation, which states, “in times of dread, artists must never choose to remain silent.” – and I can’t wait to find out more… Exhibition page: https://www.hauserwirth.com/hauser-wirth-exhibitions/michaela-yearwood-dan-no-time-for-despair/ -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.famm.com/en/ https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everyone and welcome back to season 13 of the Great Women Artist podcast. I am so excited to be sharing this upcoming season with you and to say that this series is again supported by the Levitt Collection, a vast and varied art collection of which a major and ever-increasing portion is dedicated to works by women artists.
0:21.5	Today, there are over 600 works by women artists in the collection.
0:26.1	After publishing the must-have book, Abstract Expressionists, The Women, in 2023,
0:31.4	Christian Levitt went on to open on the 21st of June last year, FAMM,
0:35.9	the first private museum in Europe entirely dedicated to women artists,
0:40.6	which is just utterly amazing. Located in Mujan, near Cannes in the south of France,
0:46.0	this newly transformed space features a stunning collection of over 100 works by many of the leading
0:51.4	female artists that span from the Imp impressionist period to the contemporary today.
0:56.0	Think Tracy Emin to Marina Abramovich, past podcast guests, I might add.
1:00.0	The impressive exhibition of painting, sculptures and photographs from the Leveck Collection
1:04.0	highlight the creative brilliance of women who have played pivotal roles
1:08.0	in shaping some of the major artistic movements of the modern period.
1:12.7	Only 30 minutes from Nice Airport, FAMM, which stands for female artists of the Mujan Museum,
1:18.5	is open every day and for further information and bookings, please visit www.fam.com.
1:25.8	I hope you enjoy this episode.
1:32.9	Hello everyone and welcome to The Great Women Artist podcast with me, Katie Hessel.
1:39.2	Some of you might know me from The Great Women Artists, an Instagram account. I set up in
1:43.1	October 2015, which celebrates
1:45.4	female artists on a daily basis, ranging from young graduates to old masters. Well, in a similar
1:52.0	fashion to the Instagram, this podcast is all about celebrating female artists from a variety
1:57.5	of backgrounds and histories. And I am so excited to be interviewing artists on their career
2:02.7	or artists, writers, curators or general art lovers
	...

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