Supergirl – Woman of Tomorrow

Supergirl – Woman of Tomorrow

The woman in this painting faces two directions at once. She is here, and she is also there — present in two places, needed in both, belonging fully to neither. If you are a woman, you probably recognized her before you finished reading that sentence.

The Word "Superwoman"

Superwoman is meant as the highest praise. Beautiful, kind, capable, compassionate, endlessly patient, strong in every situation — and always smiling. The list never ends, and that is exactly the problem. Who invented this word, and who is it really for?

If superwoman means the best, then perhaps every woman is already a superwoman — simply because being a woman means holding many lives inside one: many roles, many responsibilities, many directions at once. That is why my figure looks both ways. Not torn, but doubled. I painted her to say: I see this. I understand. And still — look how much peace and beauty she carries.

Superwoman or supergirl? The pairing sets a young girl beside a mature woman. Both, we are told, must be super.

What the 1920s Magazines Revealed

While building this collage, I searched through illustrated magazines from the 1920s. It was fascinating to watch how women were portrayed then — in the family, the workplace, society. They too were shown as superwomen, but mostly because someone else expected it of them. A century later, the expectation has changed its clothes but not its shape. That tension between who a woman is and who she is asked to be still runs through the lives of the people I paint for.

How This Work Was Made

This piece is mixed media: monotype and collage, with colour built from offset ink, acrylic paint and crayon. It passed through my graphic press many times, each pass layering another trace onto the surface — much like the layers a woman carries, one pressed over another, until they become a single image.

Like all my work, it doesn't hand you a conclusion. It leaves room for your own answer to the question: do women actually want to be superwomen?

If this woman looks familiar to you — if she is you — the original is available in my online gallery. Buying directly from me is simple: write, ask, and the painting travels from my studio to your wall.

Jolanta